
aass_ J A : i533 

Book 






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DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
{In the dress ivorn by him in his journey to the Hebrides.) 



MACAULAYS AND CARLYLE'S 
ESSAYS 

ON 

SAMUEL JOHNSON 



EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 

WILLIAM STRUNK, Jr. 

Instructor in English, Cornell University 
SECOND EDITION, REVISED 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1896 






Copyright, 1895, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & COo 



By IVatiaTer 

NOV 11 1922 



THE MEKSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction : page 

I. Johnson and Boswell, ..... v 

II. Sketch of Macaulay's Life, ... ix 

III. Macaulay and Croker, ..... xii 

IV. Remarks on Macaulay's Essay, . . xvii 
V. Sketch of Carlyle's Life, . . . , xxv 

VI. The Relation between the two Essays, . xxxi 

VII. Remarks on Carlyle's Essay, . . xxxiii 

Text : 

Samuel Johnson, by Thomas Babington Macaulay, i 

Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Thomas Carlyle, 65 

Notes : 

Notes on Macaulay's Essay, . . . . . 159 

Notes on Carlyle's Essay, ..... 178 



INTRODUCTION, 



I. Johnson and Boswell. 

[The first great authorities for the lives of the two are Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson and Tour to the Hebrides. Besides the 
great literary excellence of these works, their veracity and accuracy 
are unquestioned. The other sources for Johnson's biography, 
mentioned in the two essays, add little to what Boswell tells, and 
are of interest chiefly to annotators of the Life. Mrs. Thrale 
gives some anecdotes not found elsewhere, it is true, but her book 
has no serious value ; it is merely amusing. Hawkins is proverb- 
ially dull, and has an air of giving information at second hand. 
Tyers gives merely a rambling collection of gossip, told in com- 
monplace fashion. Murphy, a professional man of letters and a 
personal friend, wrote a life of Johnson as one of his literary com- 
missions, just as he had previously written a life of Fielding ; sat- 
isfactory performances in their day, but now long obsolete. 

Apart from his relation to Johnson, Boswell must be studied in 
the account of his life prefixed to Boswelliana : the Commonplace 
Book of James Boswell, edited by the Rev. Charles Rogers, 
London, 1874 (printed for the Grampian Club). Leslie Stephen 
has supplied a briefer account to the Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy. The shorter lives of Johnson are by Macaulay in the 
Britannica, by Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National 
Biography and the English Men of Letters series, and by Lieut. - 
Col. F. Grant in the Great Writers series. The latter work con- 
tains a bibliography to the year 1887. The leading incidents in 
the lives of both are reviewed in Minto's English Prose.\ 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

It is not intended here to offer any substitute for 
an acquaintance with Boswell. The following table 
of dates is for convenient reference. 

Johnson. Boswell. 

1709. Born at Lichfield, Sept. 

18. 
1 71 2. Touched for the scrofula 

by Queen Anne. 

1728. Enters Pembroke Col- 
lege, Oxford, Oct. 31. 
Translates into Latin Pope's 
Messiah. 

1729. Returns home in De- 
cember. 

1731. Death of his father. 

1732. Usher at Market Bos- 
worth. 

1734. Begins residence at Bir- 
mingham. 

1735. Publishes Lobars Abys- 
sinia ; marries Mrs. Eliza- 
beth Porter ; opens a school 
at Edial. 

1737. Removes to London with 
Mrs. Johnson, after a pre- 
liminary visit with Garrick. 

1738. Begins writing for The 
Gentleman s Magazine. Pub- 
lishes London. 

1740-1743. Reports the Z>£'(^<?/^j 1740. Born at Edinburgh, 
of parliament in The Gentle- Oct. 29. 

man^s Magazine. 

1744. Life of Savage. 

IT4T. Addresses to Lord Ches- 
terfield the Flan for a Dic- 
tionary of the English Lan- 
guage. 



INTRODUCTION. 



vn 



1 748-1 75 5. Writes the Dic- 
tionary. 

1749. Publishes The Vanity of 
Human Wishes ; Irene acted 
(written in 1737). 

1750-52. Publishes The Ram- 
bler. 

1751. Death of Mrs. Johnson. 

1755. Letter to Lord Chester- 
field ; degree of M. A. from 
Oxford ; the Dictionary pub- 
lished. 

1758-1760. The Idler. 

1759. Death of his mother ; 
publishes Rasselas. 



1762. Pensioned. 

1763. Meets Boswell, 

1764. Founding of the Literary 
Club. 

1765. Degree of LL. D. from 
Dublin ; meets the Thrales 
(perhaps in 1764) ; publishes 
his edition of Shakespeare. 



'^117>- Tour to Scotland and the 
Hebrides with Boswell. 



1759-60. Studies civil law at 
Glasgow University. 

1760. First visit to London. 

1761. His first publications, 
an Elegy and an Ode. 

1763. Meets Johnson ; goes 
to Utrecht for study. 

1 764-1 766. Travels in Ger- 
many, Switzerland, Italy, 
Corsica, and France. 



1766. Admitted to the Scotch 
Bar as advocate. 

1768. Account of Corsica. 

1769. Visits London ; attends 
the Stratford Jubilee ; mar- 
ries his cousin, Margaret 
Montgomerie. 

1773. Elected a member of 
the Club ; tour with John- 



INTRODUCTION. 



1774. Tour to North Wales. 

1775. Publishes theyicz/rM^j)/ and 
Taxation no Tyranny ; de- 
gree of D. C. L. from Oxford ; 
visits Paris with the Thrales. 

1777-81. Writes and publishes 
The lives of the Poets. 

1784. Death, London, Dec. 13. 



1775-1785. Visits London each 
year, excepting 1777, 1780, 
and 1782. 



1782. Death of his father. 



1784. Tyers's Biographical 

Sketch {Gentleman s Maga- 
zine for Dec). 



1786. Mrs. Thrale's Anecdotes. 



1787. Sir John Hawkins's Life 
(two editions). 

1787-89. Johnson's works ed- 
ited by Hawkins. 



1792. Murphy's Essay on the 
Life and Genius of Johnson, 
prefixed to an edition of his 
works. 



1785. Journalofa Tourto The 
Hebrides (two editions). 

1786. Called to the English 
Bar. Third edition of the 
Tonr. 



1789. Takes a house in Lon- 
don ; death of his wife. 
1790. Publishes in advance Z"//^ 
Letter from Samuel Johnson 
to the Earl of Chesterfield, 
and ^ Conversation between 
George III. and Samuel 
Johnson. 

1791. The Life of Samuel 
Johnson. 



1793. Second edition of the 

Life. 
1795. Death, London, May 19. 



IN TROD UC TION. »X 

II. Sketch of Macaulay's Life. 

[Macaulay's life has been related in full, with selections from 
his diary and letters, by his nephew, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 
2 vols., 1876. This is the standard account of his life, and more- 
over one of the most interesting and readable of biographies. 
Macaulay's connection with the Edinburgh Review may be fol- 
lowed in Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey 
Napier, 1879. For an estimate of his place in literature the 
reader is referred to Bagehot's Literary Studies, or Leslie 
Stephen's Half Hours in a Library, or to the shorter biographies, 
by J. Cotter Morison in the English Men of Letters, by Mark 
Pattison in the Britannica, and by Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary 
of National Biography. A summary of the facts of his life is 
given by Professor Minto in the Manual of English Prose Liter- 
ature. The present remarks are intended merely to give the 
reader a notion of Macaulay's circumstances and influence at the 
time of writing this essay in 1831.] 

Macaulay was born in Leicestershire in 1800. His 
fatlier, Zachary Macaulay, was accounted a distin- 
guished man. He was a leading agitator for the 
abolition of the slave trade, edited the organ of the 
movement, TJie Christian Observer., and had been 
governor of Sierra Leone. He was an educated 
man, practised in historical and political questions, 
and rigid in his notions of morality and propriety. 
His son's fondness for poetry and light reading gave 
him many qualms of conscience, which young 
Macaulay had constantly to contend against, as 
appears from several letters published by Trevelyan. 
Macaulay's mother was a cultured gentlewoman, who 
supervised her son's early reading, and criticised his 
juvenile productions. 

The boy's early reading was voluminous. At six 



X INTRODUCTION. 

he had begun to receive pocket-money for the pur- 
chase of books. At eight he had "nearly exhausted 
the epics," and could recite by heart Scott's Lay 
and Marmioti, at that time the freshest additions to 
English literature. About the same time he compiled 
for himself an epitome of universal history, from the 
Creation to the year 1800, and wrote several heroic 
and romantic poems, inspired by his reading of Scott. 
Already he bore some resemblance to the Macaulay 
of maturer years, whose intellectual characteristics 
were vast reading, prodigious memory, and fluency 
in composition. 

Macaulay received his earliest instruction at a 
small school in Clapham, and at twelve entered a pri- 
vate school conducted by the Rev. Mr. Preston. He 
went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
at eighteen. Here he devoted himself to the classics, 
expressing great distaste for mathematical studies. 
He twice gained the chancellor's medal for English 
verse, and won other minor distinctions, but his 
neglect of the mathematics barred him from the highest 
honors. In 1824, two years after his graduation, he 
was made a Fellow. 

In 1823 Knight's Quarterly Magazine began, with 
Cambridge men as chief contributors, and Macaulay 
as the chief of these. His contributions attracted 
the notice of Jeffrey, who invited him to write for 
the Edinburgh Reviciv. In August, 1825, appeared 
Macaulay's essay on Milton. The author was at once 
a famous man. Murray declared that it would be 
worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have him on 
the Quarterly, and Jeffrey, acknowledging the receipt 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

of the manuscript, wrote, "The more I think, the less 
I can conceive where you picked up that style." 

In the next succeeding years Macaulay's fame grew 
steadily. His articles in the Review were more 
eagerly read than anything of the kind published in 
England. They were unsigned, according to the cus- 
tom of the time, but their brilliant, vigorous style 
caused them to be recognised at a glance, and the 
sale of the Revieiu came to depend in a measure on 
the frequency of his contributions. A number of 
now famous articles appeared between the one on 
Milton and the present one on Johnson, among them 
Drydoi, Byron, and Bunyan. In the meantime 
Macau lay had been called to the bar, but he neglected 
law for literature and politics. In January, 1828, he 
was made a commissioner of bankruptcy, at an annual 
salary of ^400. Three political essays, published in 
1829, attracted the favorable notice of Lord Lans- 
downe, who in 1830 offered him a seat in parliament, 
as the representative of the "pocket borough" of 
Calne. In the House he rose rapidly into prominence 
by his speeches on the Reform Bill. 

In 1 83 1 the remuneration for his writings had be- 
come for a time Macaulay's only source of income. 
He had lost all expectations from his father's estate, 
once estimated at ^100,000 but now swept away by 
business reverses, he had in 1830 helped by his vote 
and influence to abolish his office as commissioner of 
bankruptcy, and he now saw his annual ;£'^oo of fel- 
lowship money expiring. Under this pressure, not- 
withstanding his active political life, Macaulay was 
now doing his hardest work on the Review, sending 



XI 1 INTRODUCTION. 

in an article to each number. During the rest of his 
life his reputation continued to develop, but it is 
doubtful whether his direct personal influence as a 
reviewer could ever have been greater than at this 
time. His article on Robert Montgomery destroyed 
a reputation; his praise of Bunyan set everyone to 
re-reading The Pilgrim' s Progress. Croker's cento of 
the biographies of Johnson was never reprinted. 

It will be sufficient to remind the reader that much 
that is associated with Macaulay's name comes after 
the date of the present essay: in literature, many of 
his best-known essays, among them those dealing with 
Walpole, Chatham, Bacon, Clive, Hastings, Addison, 
and Mme. D'Arblay, the Lays of Ancient Rome., 
several lives in the Bri/anniea, and the History of 
England, and in his life, the two landmarks of his 
service in India (i 834-1 838) and his elevation to the 
peerage (1857). He died in 1859. 

III. Macaulay and Croker. 

[For Croker's career the chief source of information is Crokur's 
Correspondence and Diaries, edited by Louis J. Jennings, 3 vols., 
1884. A more condensed account, by Sir Theodore Martin, is to 
be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Both writers 
do Croker more than justice in the story of the controversy over 
the edition of Boswell.] 

John Wilson Croker was twenty years Macaulay's 
senior. He was his foremost antagonist in debate and 
almost his only personal enemy, from the time when 
the younger of the two entered the House of Com- 
mons. Croker's biographers have done their best to 
present him in a favorable light: he was certainly a 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

hard-working, conscientious public servant, and an 
enthusiastic student of literature and history, but his 
harshness and cynicism cannot be entirely disguised. 
The long feud between Macaulay and Croker, begun 
in the House and intensified by the appearance of the 
essay on Johnson, is an unpleasant chapter in literary 
history, to be revived here only so far as is necessary 
to an appreciation of Macaulay' s language and of its 
effect. 

Croker had been in parliament since 1807. In 
debate he spoke frequently upon the Tory side. He 
was now (1831) a prominent opponent of the Reform 
Bill, and in this capacity had had frequent sharp 
encounters with Macaulay, in some of which the 
member for Calne had been worsted, and his argu- 
ments stigmatized as "vague generalities handled with 
that brilliant imagination which tickles the ear and 
amuses the fancy without satisfying the reason." 
Macaulay was presumably anxious for revenge. 

Croker's project of editing Boswell was proposed 
to Mr. Murray in January, 1829. The Avork of col- 
lection and preparation occupied the next two years. 
The book appeared June 22, 1831. 

In March, 1831, Macaulay had written to Macvey 
Napier, Jeffrey's successor as editor of the Edinburgh 
Review., "I will certainly review Croker's Boswell 
when it comes out." On June 29, he wrote in a letter 
to his sister Hannah, "I am to review Croker's edi- 
tion of Bozzy. It is wretchedly ill done. The notes 
are poorly written and shamefully inaccurate. There 
is, however, much curious information in it. The 
whole of 'The Tour to the Hebrides' is incorporated 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

with 'The Life.' So are most of Mrs. Thrale's anec- 
dotes, and much of Sir John Hawkins's lumbering 
book. The whole makes five large volumes." He 
then goes on to ex])lain to her two of Boswell's anec- 
dotes, by means of Croker's notes. Some weeks later 
he writes, in reference to one of his own speeches in 
the House, "I ought to tell you that Peel was very 
civil, and cheered me loudly, and that impudent, 
leering Croker congratulated the House on the proof 
which I had given of my readiness. He was afraid, 
he said, that I had been silent so long on account of 
the many allusions which had been made to Calne. 
Now that I had risen again, he hoped that they should 
hear me oftener. See whether I do not dust that 
varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the 
Blue and Yellotv.^ I detest him more than cold 
boiled veal." On the 9th of September he writes to 
her, "Half my article on Bos well went to Edinburgh 
yesterday. I have, though I say it who should not 
say it, beaten Croker black and blue." 

The article appeared in the September number of 
the Review, 1831. The other magazines had spoken 
favorably; the Qiiarfeiiy Reiiicw, for instance (which 
Croker had helped to found in 1808, and to which 
he was still one of the principal contributors), calling 
the new work, "the best edition of an English book 
that has appeared in our time." In October, 
Macaulay wrote to his friend T. F. Ellis, "My article 
on Croker has . . . smashed his book . . . Croker 
looks across the House of Commons at me with a 

*So the Revieiv \v3,s familiarly called. Its cover was dark blue, 
with a yellow back. 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

leer of hatred which I repay with a gracious smile of 
pity." 

Croker was not to be smashed without a struggle. 
In Blackwood's for November {Nodes Anibrosiana:, 
No. LIX.) his friend J. G. Lockhart replied in his 
behalf. Lockhart answered Macaulay only in part, 
defending Croker' s accuracy, not his editorial method. 
In actual defense there was little to be said, but he 
made a lively counter-attack, in which he easily 
showed that Macaulay, while triumphing over minor 
errors of Croker as "scandalous inaccuracy," had 
himself made not a few of the same kind. 

Croker afterwards wrote and distributed privately 
a pamphlet in his own defense, based on Lockhart's 
article, but Macaulay did not deign a retort, partly, it 
seems, from the belief that his original antagonist in 
the Nodes had been not Lockhart, but Wilson (' 'Chris- 
topher North"), who had assailed him ferociously for 
another of his essays two years before. 

Croker's turn came in 1849. When the first two 
volumes of Macaulay's History of England were pub- 
lished, he declared in the Quarterly that the book 
would "never be quoted as authority on any ques- 
tion or point in the history of England," and explained 
its popularity by comparing it to Waverley. He also 
impeached the author's style, accuracy, and fairness. 
Trevelyan informs us that Croker's article was "a 
farrago of angry trash," and "so bitter, so foolish, 
and, above all, so tedious, that scarcely anybody 
could get through it, and nobody was convinced by 
it." But Sir George was hardly open to conviction. 

To return to the controversy over Croker's Boswell. 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

The inaccuracies, which Macaulay was at such pains 
to expose and denounce, were after all only trivial. 
The gravamen of the charge against Croker should 
have been, not the blundering way in which he pur- 
sued his plan of editing, but the nature of the plan 
itself. He deliberately mangled an English classic 
by inserting passages from other books. Macaulay 
indeed does not let this go unmentioned, but he is 
here far from showing proper indignation. Carlyle, 
with a truer literary sense than Macaulay, ignores 
Croker's errors in dates and genealogies as too petty 
for discussion, and arraigns him for his vicious edi- 
torial method. 

It is evident that Macaulay's plan of attack was 
dictated by personal hostility. He lays less stress 
on Croker's serious offence, an error of judgment, 
and dwells at length upon trifles of scholarship, in 
order to humiliate Croker by making him out an 
ignoramus. He exaggerates the importance of slight 
mistakes in order to indulge a personal animosity 
against the offender. And while so doing, he makes 
several mistakes on his own account. 

As Macaulay acknowledged to his sister, Croker 
had collected from Johnson's surviving contempo- 
raries, and from other sources, "much curious infor- 
mation," which has been drawn upon by all succeed- 
ing editors. The condemnation by Macaulay and 
Carlyle caused the subsequent withdrawal of the 
interpolations, which were relegated to an appendix, 
all except the Tour, which was perversely retained 
in the midst of the Life. Croker lived to issue two 
more editions of Boswell, in 1835 and 1848, and his 



INTRODUCTION. XVll 

edition has been three times reprinted in England 
since his death. In its various forms, between forty 
and fifty thousand copies of his work have been 
sold. 

IV. Remarks on Macaulav's Essay. 

Structure. The essay consists of three sections. 
The first disposes of Croker. A single paragraph, 
commending the book that Croker has edited, fur- 
nishes the transition to the second section, which dis- 
cusses Boswell. The third and principal section 
discusses Johnson. 

In the third section the form of writing is mainly 
generalized description. The introductory paragraph 
gives a striking portrait of Johnson, unsurpassed in 
Macaulay's writings for rapid and effective enumera- 
tion of details. This is followed by two descriptions, 
the first of the Grub Street author, to whom Johnson 
is assumed to have borne a resemblance in the days 
of his early obscurity in London, the second of John- 
son himself, as he appeared in society during his 
last twenty years. The first is located in time by the 
words, "Johnson came to London," the second by 
the words, "A pension had been conferred upon 
him." These are the only biographical details af- 
forded. Macaulay assumes in the reader an acquaint- 
ance with Johnson's life and works. 

The essay contains nothing resembling the digres- 
sions of either DeQuincey or Carlyle. Macaulay as 
a rule keeps close to his subject. In the present essay 
the only exception is the paragraph beginning, "How 



XViii INTRODUCTION. 

it chanced" (p. 51), in which the author palpably 
goes out of his way to condemn the reasoning of the 
schoolmen, and to aim a deliberate side-thrust at cer- 
tain "eminent lawyers," his fellow members in the 
House. 

Matter. Macaulay does not do justice to either 
Johnson or Boswell. Carlyle's essay was a reply on 
behalf of both. In his life of Johnson, contributed 
in 1856 to the Eiuyclopcedia Britannica, Macaulay 
made reparation for his criticisms on the former. 
Certain specific statements in the essay are elaborately 
refuted by G. B. Hill, in two chapters of his Dr.JoJui- 
son : his Friends and /lis Critics, 1878. Macaulay's 
treatment of both his subjects is unsympathetic. 
Despite his fondness for literature and for literary 
illustration, his turn of mind was matter of fact, prac- 
tical. He found Johnson and Boswell in no way like 
his colleagues in parliament or the earls and ambas- 
sadors whom he met at Holland House, and he was 
unable to enter into sympathy with them. 

Further, his love of paradox led him to exaggerate 
Boswell's meanness in order to contrast it with his 
genius (though he nowhere uses so complimentary a 
term), and to heighten Johnson's superstition, rude- 
ness, and intolerance, in order to contrast them with 
his incredulity, his benevolence, and his enlighten- 
ment. 

Furthermore, his habit of exaggeration and his 
fondness for strong effect led him to misrepresent 
facts. Macaulay's perversions of Boswell's anecdotes 
are irritating when compared with their originals. 
Thus : 



INTRODUCTIOtV. XIX 

Johnson described him [Bosvvell] as a fellow who had missed 
his only chance of immortality liy not having been alive when the 
" Dimciad " was written, (p. 26 ) 

Turning to the Lifi\ Oct. 16, 1769, we find: 

lie [Johnson] repeated to us, in his forcible, melodious manner, 
the concluding lines of the Dmiciad. While he was talking loudly 
in praise of those lines, one* of the company ventured to say, 'Too 
line for such a poem : — a poem on what?' Johnson, (with a 
disdainful look,) ' Why, on dunces. It v^'as worth while being a 
dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst thou lived in those days ! ' 

From this we see that Johnson was not describing 
Boswell at all, but merely rallying him to his face 
with a bit of off-hand banter, the petty punishment 
for an interruption. The uncomplimentary term 
"fellow" is seen to be an addition by Macaulay, and 
even the main statement is a distortion. Another 
instance: 

He himself [Johnson] went on a ghost-hunt to Cock Lane, and 
was angry with John Wesley for not following up another scent of 
the same kind with the proper spirit and perseverance, (p. 47.) 

In the Life, April 15, 1778, we read : 

Of John Wesley, he said, ' He can talk well on any subject.' 
Boswell. ' Pray, Sir, what has he made of his story of a ghost ? ' 
Johnson. ' Why, Sir, he believes it ; but not on sufficient 
authority ... I am sorry that John did not take more pains to 
inquire into the evidence for it.' 

Was Johnson angry with John Wesley? Nothing in 
the text justifies so strong a term. Moreover, the 
story is in direct opposition to Macaulay' s interpreta- 

* Evidently Boswell. He does not give his name, because the 
joke is on himself. 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

tion. It is cited as evidence for Johnson's supersti- 
tious belief in ghosts; it turns out to illustrate his 
very rational incredulity on the subject. 

Originality. This is not Macaulay's strong point. 
His essay represents no deeper insight into Johnson's 
character ; it is merely a skillful and lucid statement 
of the difficulties which his character presents at first 
sight. "Macaulay's Boswell," says Garnett in his 
Carlyle, "is the Boswell of his neighbors." Most of 
Macaulay's judgments on the two can be found, some- 
times in almost the same words, in earlier writers. A 
few illustrations will help to make this evident. Thus: 

Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. " ' The Rehearsal,' " he 
said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep it sweet ; " then, 
after a pause, "it has not enough vitality to preserve it from 
putrefaction." (p. 6i.) 

From the Life, June 19, 1784, we see that this criti- 
cism is taken bodily from Boswell: 

He seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in his own style, for 
when he had carelessly missed it, he would repeat the thought trans- 
lated into it. Talking of the Comedy of the Rehearsal, he said, 
'It has not wit enough to keep it sweet.' This was easy; he 
therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more round sentence ; 
' It has not enough vitality to preserve it from putrefaction.' 

Again, Macaulay writes: 

The habits of his [Johnson's] early life had accustomed him to 
bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with mod- 
eration, (p. 43.) 

This, with the sentence which succeeds it, is a repro- 
duction of what Boswell writes in the Life^ March 20, 
1781: 



IN TROD UC TIOM. XXI 

Everything about his character and manners was forcible and 
violent ; there never was any moderation ; many a day did he 
fast, many a year did he refrain from wine ; but when he did eat, 
it was voraciously ; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. 
He could practice abstinence, but not temperance. 

Further, compare Macaulay's remarks on Johnson's 
"little talent for personation" (p. 62) v^^ith the fol- 
lowing from Courtenay's Poetical Review of the 
Literary ami Moral Character of the late Samuel John- 
son (1786): 

But all propriety his Ramblers mock, 

Where Betty prates from Newton and from Locke ; 

When no diversity we trace between 

The lofty moralist and gay fifteen. 

Many of Macaulay's strictures on Boswell are antici- 
pated by Boswell himself, who clearly foresaw the hue 
and cry that would be raised against him; nearly all 
the hard names applied to Boswell in the essay can be 
found in the contemporary lampoons* of John Wol- 
cot ("Peter Pindar"). 

Still, Macaulay remains a great writer ; it matters 
little to his readers that his opinions can be found, 
less forcibly expressed, either in Boswell or in poems 
that have passed out of remembrance. What he 
repeats, he repeats in a new and attractive form ; 
the coins of his mintage glitter far more than the 
old-fashioned jewelry he has melted down. 

Style. The student is referred to Minto's English 

* A Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to fames Boswell, Esq. 
(1785 ?); Bozzy and Piozzi, or the British Biographers : A Town 
Eclogue (1786). 



X xu IN TROD UC 7 -ION. 

Prose for a full discussion. A few striking peculiar- 
ities are mentioned here, with express reference to 
the present essay. 

1. Clearness. Macaulay is admirably clear. His 
professed aim was to write no sentence that did not 
disclose its meaning on first reading. Trevelyan 
accounts for his success in making himself clear, by 
his custom of talking and writing to children. It is to 
be noted that Macaulay's style is that of an orator; he 
became a debater at Cambridge. The orator, whose 
language must be understood while it is delivered, 
feels the importance of clearness more strongly than 
the writer of printed literature. 

Regard for clearness determines several marked 
features of Macaulay's style. One is his frequent 
repetition of a thought from different points of view. 
Notice, for instance, the first three sentences of the 
paragraph beginning, "Johnson decided literary ques- 
tions" (p. 53), and the passage, "He was no master," 
etc., to "he knew nothing" (p. 55). Another is his 
fondness for illustration. Almost every statement is 
supported either by evidence or by one or more 
parallels. Note the list of government appointments 
held by English authors (p. 35), and the appeal to 
Roman and Greek epitaphs (p. 55). Negative aids to 
clearness are the infrequency of metaphor and the 
almost total absence of digression. 

2. Force. Rhetorically, Macaulay's force lies chiefly 
in his preference for the short sentence, in his use of 
repeated structure, and in his strong sense of contrast, 
which makes antithesis his favorite figure. 

In the first particular he is strikingly unlike De 



INTRODUCTION. xxiii 

Quincey. Macaulay may be said to give us not so 
much sentences as detached parts of sentences, omit- 
ting the connectives, as "because, therefore, accord- 
ingly, moreover, for, and," which indicate the mutual 
relations of clauses. He thereby gains in vigor, 
but he loses in delicacy and in perspective. Note the 
last four sentences of the paragraph beginning, "The 
course which Mr. Croker" (p. 23), or the following 
extreme case, from the essay on Hampden: 

The Puritans were persecuted with cruelty worthy of the Holy 
Office. They were forced to fly from the country. They were 
imprisoned. They were whipped. Their ears were cut off. 
Their noses were slit. Their cheeks were branded with red-hot 
irons. 

The paragraph is then concluded by means of longer 
sentences. 

Macaulay's use of repeated structure and of antith- 
esis does not require illustration. 

3. Paragraphs. Unity in the paragraph is usually 
observed. There is one exception in the present 
essay, the long paragraph beginning, "Johnson came 
among them" (pp. 42-5), which contains material for 
two paragraphs, one on Johnson's physical habits, the 
other on his harshness and his insensibility to distress. 

Characteristic of Macaulay is the alternating struc- 
ture of many of his paragraphs: they are more or less 
antithetic in arrangement. The simplest and com- 
monest form is begun by a series of remarks that leads 
us to expect a conclusion directly opposite to the one 
reached. In the centre of the paragraph we find the 
word "but," "yet," or "however," after which the 
real theme of the paragraph is taken up and carried 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

through to the end. Examples are the paragraphs 
beginning, "Many of his sentiments" (p. 48), "No- 
body spoke more contemptuously" (p. 49), "As- 
suredly one fact" (p. 59), "Mannerism is pardonable" 
(p. 61). Note the last example, contrasting it with, 
"He was undoubtedly, etc." (p. 54) and see how 
a transposition of members may be made to produce 
a second, more involved, paragraph-structure. A 
third variant appears in the paragraph beginning, "On 
men and manners" (p. 55), where the force of the 
word "indeed" is concessive (equivalent to an "al- 
though" at the beginning of the sentence). Omitting 
the third and fourth sentences and the introductory 
"but" of the fifth, we have left a complete paragraph 
that moves in a straight line with no trace of the man- 
nerism in question. Macaulay, however, enlivens it 
by stopping half-way from his conclusion, making a 
false start in the opposite direction, then turning again 
and finishing. 

4. Allusions. Macaulay 's wide reading enabled him 
to illustrate profusely from literature and history every 
subject that he handled. He abounds in compari- 
sons. In imaginative literature the authors on whom 
he draws most frequently are Shakespeare, Milton, 
Homer, and Dante. There are frequent references to 
Biblical events and characters. Less numerous, but 
still plentiful, are allusions to Don Quixote., the Arabian 
Nights., the Pilgrim'' s Progress, Tom Jones, and G21I- 
livers Travels. 

Macaulay sometimes makes formal quotations, 
sometimes refers to familiar incidents, but most fre- 
quently merely mentions the men and women of fie- 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 

tion as the representatives of certain traits of char- 
acter. In the present essay, for instance, he thus 
sets off Boswell's folly by contrasting it with that of 
Alnaschar and of Malvolio. Most rarely he weaves 
into his own expression the phraseology of other 
writers. One of the few instances is the passage on 
p. 43, "by that bread," etc., where he uses the lan- 
guage of Dante and of the Bible. This is the sort of 
allusion in which Carlyle abounds. Macaulay's plan 
is more entertaining to the majority of readers. 

It is also to be noted that Macaulay usually takes 
pains to make his allusions self-explanatory, at the 
same time flattering the reader by concealing the 
help. See for instance p. 55, where in mentioning the 
comparatively little-known Directions to Se7-vants, he 
is careful to remind the reader, but without obtruding 
the information, that Swift is the author. See also 
p. 36, "The supreme power passed to a man who 
cared little for poetry or eloquence." If the reader 
is not well enough informed to receive a definite im- 
pression from this statement, he need read only a few 
lines further on, to be told, in the politest manner 
possible, that the man is Walpole, who had an oppor- 
tunity of admiring, in contemporary poetry T/ie 
Seasons., and in contemporary "eloquence" Pamela; 
that the former was written by Thomson, and the 
latter by Richardson. 

V. Sketch of Carlyle's Life. 

[The biography of Carlyle is by J. A. Froude. It is in two 
parts : Thomas Carlyle, a History of the first forty Years of his 
Life, 2 vols., 1882 ; Thomas Carlyle, a History of his Life in 



XXVI INTRODUCTION. 

London, 2 vols., 1884. Besides the above should be consulted his 
Rejniniscenccs, published by Froude in i88r, the Letters and 
Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, prepared for publication by 
Carlyle and edited by Froude, 3 vols., 1883, and the Correspond- 
ence of Thotnas Carlyle with R. W. Emerson, edited by Charles 
Eliot Norton, 2 vols., 1883. Further, the second book of Sartor 
Resartus is autobiographic. 

Carlyle's life has been written for the Dictionary of National 
Biography by Leslie Stephen, for the English Men of Letters 
series by Professor Nichol, and for the Great Writers series by 
Richard Garnett. Professor Minto gives a short account in his 
English Prose. ] 

Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795, at Ecclefecchan 
in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, on the western side, a 
few miles from the English border. His father, 
James Carlyle, was a mason, who had built with his 
own hands the house in which he lived. Later he 
turned farmer. He was a stern, silent, thrifty Cal- 
vinist. Carlyle's mother had received but a limited 
education: she could write letters only with difficulty; 
she was frightened, "to distraction well nigh," when, 
at the age of twenty-nine, her son made a visit to 
France. 

Carlyle was taught to read by his mother; for fur- 
ther instruction he was sent to the village school. At 
seven the boy was on examination "complete" in 
English branches, and by advice of his examiner 
sought Latin instruction from the son of the minister. 
At nine he was placed in the grammar school of the 
neighboring town of Annan, where he studied Latin, 
French, and the rudiments of mathematics, and gained 
favorable reports. Thereupon it was decided by his 
parents that the boy should have an eldest son's por- 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 11 

tion in education : should go to Edinburgh, study at 
the University, and become a minister. 

To Edinburgh accordingly Carlyle was sent when 
not quite fifteen. With an older companion he 
trudged on foot the hundred miles from his home to 
the capital. For the next five years his life was one 
of hard study. He had moderate success in the clas- 
sics, and was an able student of mathematics. He 
was moreover the oracle of a little circle of fellow- 
students, ambitious peasants' sons like himself, who 
exchanged views on literature and current affairs, and 
corresponded with each other during the vacations. 

The plan of entering the ministry, originating with 
his parents and never a fixed one with himself, Carlyle 
gradually abandoned. For the first three years after 
graduation, he earned his support by "schoolmaster- 
ing. " Resigning his second position (at Kirkcaldy) 
in 1818, he departed for Edinburgh with ;^9o of sav- 
ings. He intended to take pupils in mathematics 
until he could find some avenue to distinction. He 
learned German, attended lectures on law, read 
voluminously in the University library, found a pupil 
or two, and compiled articles for the Edinburgh En- 
cyc/flpcedia, "timorously aiming toward literature." 
He thus spent three years in ill health and desperate 
mood. In 1822 he was relieved of his hack-work by 
an appointment as tutor to the three sons of the 
Bullers, a retired Anglo-Indian family of wealth. He 
now found time for literature proper. He published 
a Life of Schiller (1823-24) in the London Magazine.^ 
and translated Legendre's Geometry and Goethe's 
Wilhelni Mcistcr (both in 1824). These works met 



xxviil INTRODUCTION. 

with a moderate degree of success. He then left the 
Bullers, and for a while supported himself as best he 
could by translation from the German. 

In 1 82 1 Carlyle had been introduced by his friend 
Edward Irving to Jane Baillie Welsh, who became his 
wife in 1826. As the daughter of a professional man, 
she was accounted Carlyle's superior, but having 
literary tastes and aspirations, she looked forward to 
marriage with Carlyle as an intellectual companion- 
ship with a man of genius. She little anticipated her 
long years of penury, household drudgery, and prac- 
tical loneliness. Thirty years later she wrote the 
often quoted Avords, "I married for ambition; Car- 
lyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever 
imagined, and I am miserable." vShe died in 1866, 
while Carlyle was on his way home from delivering his 
Installation Address as Lord Rector of the Edinburgh 
University. For about two years after their marriage 
the Carlyles lived in Edinburgh; in 1828 they retired 
to a small farm, Craigenputtoch, belonging to his wife. 
Here they lived in almost complete isolation for six 
years. In 1834 they removed to Chelsea, a suburb of 
London. 

To return to the story of Carlyle's fortunes as 
author. The temporary prosperity of 1824, arising 
from Schiller and Alcisier, was short-lived. His next 
venture in the field of translation, German Romance, 
was a financial failure, and his further plans were 
rejected by the publishers. He was unknown and 
unprepossessing, and had to create the taste by which 
he was to be enjoyed. For the first few months after 
his marriage Carlyle could earn nothing. A new 



IN 1 -ROD UCTION. XXIX 

prospect began in 1827 with a visit to Jeffrey, who 
commissioned him to write for the Edinburgh Review 
an article on Jean Paul Richter. This was followed 
by an account of the State of Gennaii Literature. 
These articles attracted attention in a limited circle. 
Burns, published in the Edinburgh Review, was 
written at Craigenputtoch (1828). With this article 
began fresh difficulties. Carlyle was too original and 
too much in earnest. Jeffrey, speaking frankly as 
a friend, implored Carlyle to abridge his article, to 
be less extravagant, to "fling away" his affectations. 
Carlyle stubbornly insisted on having the paper pub- 
lished as he had written it. He carried his point. But 
in 1829 Jeffrey retired, and his successor, Macvey 
Napier, and the editors of the other reviews, were 
reluctant to accept Carlyle's articles. A History of 
German Literature was rejected by publishers, and 
when cut up into articles, was rejected by the review 
editors. Besides the difficulty in getting articles 
accepted, was the delay of months before any pay- 
ment for them was received. The year 1831 saw the 
Carlyle household in desperate straits. Accepting 
a loan from Jeffrey, Carlyle went to London in vain 
quest of a publisher for the MS. of a book he had 
just completed, Sartor Resartus. Sartor was doomed 
to be flatly rejected at first, to appear in Eraser' s 
Magazine as a serial (paid for at reduced rates) in 
1833-34, and to be offered in book form to the British 
public only in 1838. All that came of Carlyle's trip 
was an extension of his literary acquaintance, and 
what was more to the point, several commissions for 
review articles. One was Characteristics, published in 



XXX IN 7 'ROD UC TION. 

the Edinburgh Review (Dec, 1S31); two others 
were Biography and BoswelP s Life of Johnson, pub- 
lished in Fraser's Magazine (April, 1832; May, 
1832). 

The story of Carlyle's life has now been brought 
down to the date of the present essay. At this time 
he was still all but unknown, miserably poor, without 
prospects, recognized only by a few as a stubbornly 
eccentric genius, yet defiant, steadfast, and for the 
most part confident of his powers. We read his 
utterances on Johnson with greater interest as we 
realise how closely they can be made to apply to 
himself. 

His subsequent history belongs to the study of 
English literature, and not to that of the present essay. 
An enumeration of his further works is all that can be 
attempted here. In iS;^"] tht French Bez'o/ufion estah- 
lished his fame. Annual lecture courses in the years 
1837-40 (in 1840 the famous Heroes and Hero-Wor- 
ship) relieved him from pecuniary straits. Sartor 
received a second hearing in 1838. In Chartistn 
(1839), Past and Present (1843), and Latter-Day 
Pamphlets (1850), Carlyle developed his peculiar 
political doctrines, and applied them to the "Con- 
dition-of-England question." In 1845 he published 
his second historical work, CromweW s Letters and 
Speeches. After the Life of John Sterling (1850) he 
devoted his concentrated energies for fifteen years to 
his crowning work, The History of Friedrich LL. of 
Prussia, called Frederick the Great (two volumes, 1858 ; 
two, 1862; two, 1865). This practically concluded 
his career as author; his few subsequent utterances 



INTRODUCTION. XXXI 

were those of an oracle, now and then inspired by 
public events to break his silence. He died at Chel- 
sea, February 4, 1881. 

VI. The Relation between the two Essays. 

Though nowhere expressly so stated it is certain 
from internal evidence that Carlyle's essay is a reply 
to Macaulay as well as a review of Croker. In the 
course of his discussion Carlyle undertakes to refute a 
number of Macaulay's statements. 

The first point of issue is Boswell's attachment for 
Johnson. Macaulay had imputed it to servility and 
love of notoriety: 

He [Boswell] was always laying himself at the feet of some 
eminent man, and begging to be spit npon and trampled upon, 
(p. 27 ) 

He was a slave proud of his servitude, (p. 29.) 

Carlyle sees in Boswell's relation to Johnson the sav- 
ing virtue of "Hero-worship" : 

Towards Johnson^ however, his feeling was not sycophancy, 
which is the lowest, but reverence, which is the highest of human 
feelings, (p. 84.) 

Secondly, Macaulay,. with the rest of the world, had 
blamed Boswell for disclosing familiar conversations : 

He was not ashamed to exhibit himself to the world as a common 
spy, a common tatler. . . No man, surely, ever published such 
stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and revere. 
(P- 32.) 

Carlyle defends Boswell by an ingenious argument 
based on his favorite doctrine of silence: 



xxxii INTRODUCTION. 

An exception was early taken against this " Life of Johnson : " 
. . . That such jottings-down of careless conversation are an 
infringement of social privacy . . . To this accusation . . . 
might it not be well ... to offer the . . . plea of Not at all 
gtiilty? . . . Let conversation be kept in remembrance to the 
latest date possible. Nay, should the consciousness that a man 
may be among us " taking notes " tend, in any measure, to restrict 
those floods of idle, insincere speech, in which the thought of man- 
kind is well-nigh drowned, were it other than the most indubitable 
benefit? (p. 92.) 

Further, Macaulay had explained the greatness of 
Boswell's book by the meanness and folly of its 
author: 

Boswell attained it [literary eminence] by reason of his weak- 
nesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have 
been a great writer, (p. 29.) 

Carlyle is roused by this to the highest pitch of indig- 
nation: 

Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say never rose in human 
soul. Bad IS in its nature negative, and can do nothing ; what- 
ever enables us to do anything is by its very nature good. Alas, 
that there should be teachers in Israel, or even learners, to whom 
this world-ancient fact is still problematical, or even deniable. 
. . . Neither James Boswell's good book, or any other good 
thing, in any time or in any place, was, is, or can be performed by 
any man in virtue of his badness, but always and solely in spite 
thereof, (p. 83.) 

Similarly, one can discover direct contradictions of 
Macaulay's statements about Johnson. 

What Macaulay thought of these rebukes is not 
recorded. He probably cared little; throughout his 
life he seems to have been insensible to criticism. 



INTRODUCTION. xxxill 

Carlyle's letters and diary, before and after this 
time, contain many slighting references to Macaulay, 
both as politician and as man of letters. None of 
those made public by Froude contain any mention of 
the difference of opinion over Boswell and Johnson. 
Macaulay and Carlyle did not actually meet until 
some time in the forties. 

VII. Remarks on Carlyle's Essay. 

Structure. The structure of the essay is more 
complex than that of Macaulay's, and can be compre- 
hended only after careful study. Disregarding for 
the moment what may be called digressions, we find 
three main sections. 

The first section, that dealing with Croker, is the 
shortest and simplest. By way of introduction Carlyle 
applies a fable of ^sop to the situation. He then 
tells first, what he finds to commend in Croker's work, 
and secondly, what he finds to condemn. In con- 
clusion he pronounces the work a failure. 

The second section is a discussion of the character 
of Boswell. Within this is embedded a discussion of 
the merits of his book. In an introductory paragraph 
Boswell is presented as a man of whom chiefly evil 
has been spoken. Carlyle then tells first, what he 
finds to condemn in Boswell, namely, vanity and 
sensuality; secondly, what he finds in him to com- 
mend, namely, reverence for a superior and literary 
talent. He decides that Boswell's character was 
made up of good and evil, and that the explanation of 
his great work lies entirely in the good. Carlyle next 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 

discusses Boswell's book, resting its merits on three 
grounds: it is true; it deals with the past; it contains 
historical information.* He tlien returns to Boswell 
himself, and defends his alleged breaches of con- 
fidence. 

The third section is devoted to Johnson. It is 
mechanically separated into three divisions: first, 
general introduction, and account of Johnson's early 
life (1709-1737); second, account of Johnson's life 
in London (1737-1784); third, general remarks on 
Johnson's character and influence. 

In the first division the introduction demonstrates 
that men tend to go through life in flocks, even as 
sheep do; that men, like sheep, have their leaders; 
that Johnson was one of these leaders ; consequently 
his biography deserves study. Then comes the ac- 
count of Johnson's early life, with Carlyle's comments. 

The second division is prefaced by a brief picture 
of the state of authorship at the time. Next, Johnson 
is described as confronted by a "twofold problem," 
to earn his livelihood as an author, and to do so by 
promulgating truthful doctrine. The first part of the 
problem was the choice between support from the 
patron and support from the bookseller. Carlyle 
tells what each choice implied, and which choice 
Johnson made. The second part of the problem was 
the choice between conservatism and radicalism in 
religious and political belief, Carlyle assuming that a 

* Or, one might say, it appeals to our common sense, to our feel- 
ing of reverence, and to our intellectual curiosity. The second 
and third reasons, stated above, may seem to overlap ; for Carlyle 
they are distinct. 



INTRODUCTION. xxxv 

consistent man would be either conservative in both, 
or radical in both. Was Johnson to be Tory and 
Churchman, or Whig and Deist? Carlyle describes 
the state of politics and religion, and explains and 
vindicates Johnson's choice. The narrative of his 
life is then resumed and concluded. 

The third division is something in the nature of 
a postscript, and contains miscellaneous remarks on 
Johnson's character. The chief points to be remem- 
bered are the specification of Johnson's cardinal 
virtues as valor, honesty, and affection, which last 
is made to account for his famous "prejudices," and 
the comparison drawn between Johnson and Hume. 

Carlyle does not aim at pure narrative. His char- 
acteristic manner of telling a story is to overlay each 
incident with comments, usually upon its moral signifi- 
cance. In addition, whenever he is reminded of one 
of his favorite topics of declamation — Duty, Work, 
Silence, Puffery, etc. — the narrative stops entirely, 
in order that the moral may be heard. Such passages 
may properly be termed digressions. In the present 
essay note the digressions on History (pp. 88-92), 
Silence (pp. 93-95). Fame (p. 133), Puffery (p. 147), 
etc. On further acquaintance with Carlyle one dis- 
covers that these digressions constantly recur, in 
almost the same words, in his other essays, in his 
Journal [iipitd Froude), in Sartor, in the French Rev- 
olution, etc., down to Frederick. This recurrence 
may be illustrated by the following passages: 

Thus, do not recruiting sergeants drum through the streets of 
manufacturing towns, and collect ragged losels enough ; every one 
of whom, if once dressed in red, and trained a little, will receive 



XXXVI INTRODUCTION. 

fire cheerfully for the small sum of one shilling /^r diem, and have 
the soul blown out of him at last with perfect propriety. — BoswelVs 
Johnson (p. 142). 

Ragged losels gathered by beat of drum from the overcrowded 
streets of cities, and drilled a little and dressed in red, do not they 
stand fire in an uncensurable manner ; and handsomely give their 
life, if needful, at the rate of a shilling per day ? — Latier-Day 
Pamphlets (No. II. Model Prisons). 

Matter. Carlyle cannot be accused of injustice 
to either Boswell or Johnson. He is lenient in reprov- 
ing Boswell's faults, he becomes even fantastic in 
praising his "love for excellence." To one ac- 
quainted with the whole story of Boswell's life, his 
dangling after celebrities, his "Hero-worship," is too 
much like ordinary tuft-hunting to justify all of 
Carlyle's commendation. Carlyle also takes the 
ground that Johnson was poor, unregarded, and 
obscure when Boswell sought him out. This, which 
if capable of proof would raise Boswell in our estima- 
tion, is contested by Dr. Birkbeck Hill in his Dr. 
Johnson : his Friends and his Critics ("Mr. Carlyle 
on Boswell"). 

Carlyle also goes a little too far in his praise of 
Johnson, when he asserts that through him "England 
escaped the bloodbath of a French revolution." 
Whatever England's danger, Johnson's influence was 
certainly less than Carlyle imagines. 

Originality. Carlyle's estimate of Boswell was an 
innovation; previous criticism had been little else than 
ridicule. His estimate of Johnson is original, in that 
he gives a new picture of the man and does not merely 
repeat what had been said before. But this is too 



INTRODUCTION. XXXVll 

slight praise, for his account of Johnson is correct, 
which it might have missed being, despite the greatest 
originality. Subsequent criticism of Johnson has 
differed from that of Carlyle only by being more or 
less enthusiastic than his; it has moved along the lines 
which he laid down. 

Style. For a detailed analysis of Carlyle's style, 
see Minto's English Prose. The peculiarities noted 
here are merely those which are most prominent at 
first, sight. 

1. OrtJwgraphy. A certain quaint effect is produced 
by Carlyle's old-fashioned fondness for capitals and 
hyphens. In sixteenth century fashion he capitalizes 
any emphatic noun or adjective: 

A Speaker of the Word ; the Bookselling guild ; a poor Man of 
Genius ; the Recording Angel ; they are professedly Didactic. 

He uses hyi)hens for compound numerals, for verbs 
followed by prepositional adverbs, and for compound 
nouns, often nondescripts of his own coinage : 

Fifty-third ; twenty-two years ; twenty-seven millions mostly 
fools. 

His comrades . . . slam-to the door ; the whole household 
burst-forth ; set-up a Parliament ; we should . . . look-out for 
something other and farther. 

Condition-of-England question ; universal-suffrages ; Able-Edi- 
tors; scoundrel-species; Advocate's-wig ; Tombstone-information ; 
black-or-white surplicing. 

2. Vocabulary. Carlyle is an innovator in words, 
departing widely from conventional usage. He goes 
to any length to secure a contemptuous, grotesque, 
or graphic effect. The peculiarities of his vocabulary 
include : 



X'xxvin tNTRODUCTIOK. 

a. Quaint obsolete or provincial words or meanings 
of Avords : 

Nay, other (=different), else ( = otherwise), cunning (=clever), 
somewhat (=something), anon. 

b. More or less eccentric coinages of his own, 
some of them intentionally ludicrous: 

Squirelet, pistoleer, gigmanity, Halfness, Sanspotato, squeaklets. 

c. Pedantic expressions, which the reader must 
interpret by his knowledge of Latin: 

Sedentary (p. 129), protrusive importunity, papilionaceous. 

d. Homely colloquialisms, unfamiliar to elegant 
style, commonly for humorous effect: 

Poke in ; wag their tongues ; solid-feeding Thrale ; pot-bellied 
Landlord. 

e. Stock expressions, involving a favorite doctrine 
or illustration, and not explained every time they 
occur: 

Mumbojumbo, Popinjay, Dead-Sea apes, gigmanity, Bapho- 
metic, mother of dead dogs, vesture, iron leaf, Hero-worship, mud- 
gods, etc. 

3. Figures of Speech. Carlyle's language is habit- 
ually figurative. To what extent is it a safe model? 
One must leave out chronic eccentricities, such as 
those mentioned above: Mumboj umbos, mud-gods, 
etc., and consider his less extravagant figures. In 
these he may challenge comparison with any writer. 

Carlyle continually produces the most graphic 
effects by the use of a metaphorical term, where 



INTRODUCTION. xxxix 

a writer less intent on vividness would have employed 
some easier, matter-of-fact expression ; Boswell does 
not "go to" Bolt Court, he "dives into" it; John- 
son "creeps into" his obscure lodgings; Croker col- 
lects "Tombstone-information"; the world "cackled" 
at Johnson's pension. 

Carlyle's more extended comparisons, often of a very 
homely kind, are strikingly effective. The compari- 
son is carried out with just enough detail to illustrate 
most clearly: 

Old Auchinleck had, if not the gay, tail-spreading, peacock 
vanity of his son, no little of the slow-stalking, contentious, hissing 
vanity of the gander, (p. 76.) 

His [Boswell's] mighty " constellation ; " or sun, round whom 
he, as satellite, observantly gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but 
a huge ill-snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak night-moth, circling 
foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing what he wanted. 

(P- 79-) 

The lampoon itself is indeed nothing, a soap-bubble that next 
moment will become a drop of sour suds. (p. 134.) 

4. Allusions. Carlyle's allusions are mainly of two 
sorts. First, he uses certain stock allusions, that 
recur again and again. In many of these, the sub- 
jects are taken from his gallery of heroes. He con- 
tinually enforces his dogmas by illustrations from the 
lives of Knox, Cromwell, Johnson, Milton, Napoleon, 
and other great men. Thus, he often shows how true 
greatness goes unrecognized in its own time by re- 
minding us that Shakespeare was arrested for deer- 
stealing, that Burns gauged ale-barrels, and that Mil- 
ton received ten pounds for Paradise Lost. Other 
frequent allusions are to stories that he has at least 



xl IMTRODUCTTOM. 

once told at length. Thus, the "Dead-Sea apes" are 
explained in Fast and Present ['Book III, ch. iii), and 
"gigmanity" is explained in a footnote to BoswelFs 
Johnson (p. 77). Further, he has a set of fictitious 
personages with grotesque names: Sauerteig, the phi- 
losopher, whose sayings he quotes and approves; 
M'Croudy, the political economist; Crabbe, editor of 
the Intermittent Radiator; Dryasdust, the annalist and 
statistician-; Bobus Higgins; etc., etc. These he 
sets up as contemporary types, most often for pur- 
poses of ridicule. 

Secondly, Carlyle draws largely for allusions on 
Shakespeare and the English Bible. The notes to 
the present essay point out some forty instances, 
mostly from the latter. This Biblical phraseology, 
as handled by Carlyle, aids greatly in giving his writ- 
ings their earnest, prophetic tone; the simple, scrip- 
tural phrase still keeps its place as one of the most 
effective forms of human speech. Few, however, can 
employ it with Carlyle's success. Carlyle's Shakes- 
pearean language is used with a full sense of its 
original context, and often cannot be properly under- 
stood unless the reader is familiar with the passage 
whence it is derived ; e. g., local habitation (p. 86). 

Besides his borrowings from the Bible and from 
Shakespeare, Carlyle occasionally employs expres- 
sions from other writers, especially Milton. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. (September, 1831.) 



The Life of Samuel JoJinsoti, LL.D. Including a [our- 
nal of a Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell, Esq. 
A New Edition, ivith numerous Additions and Notes. 
By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. Five Vol- 
umes 8vo. London : 1831. 

This work has greatly disappointed us. Whatever 
faults we may have been prepared to find in it, we 
fully expected that it would be a valuable addition to 
English literature; that it would contain many curious 

5 facts, and many judicious remarks ; that the style of 
the notes would be neat, clear, and precise; and that 
the typographical execution would be, as in new edi- 
tions of classical works it ought to be, almost faultless. 
We are sorry to be obliged to say that the merits of 

10 Mr. Croker' s performance are on a par with those of 
a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined, 
while travelling from London to Oxford, and which 
he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be "as 
bad as bad could be; ill fed, ill killed, ill kept, and 

15 ill dressed." This edition is ill compiled, ill arranged, 
ill written, and ill printed. 

Nothing in the work has astonished us so much as 
the ignorance or carelessness of Mr. Croker with re- 



2 MACAULAY ON 

spect to facts and dates. Many of his blunders are 
such as we should be surprised to hear any well edu- 
cated gentleman commit, even in conversation. The 
notes absolutely swarm with misstatements into which 
the editor never would have fallen, if he had taken 5 
the slightest pains to investigate the truth of his asser- 
tions, or if he had even been well acquainted with the 
book on which he undertook to comment. We will 
give a few instances. 

Mr. Croker tells us in a note that Derrick, who was ro 
master of the ceremonies at Bath, died very poor in 
1760.' We read on; and, a few pages later, we find 
Dr. Johnson and Boswell talking of this same Der- 
rick as still living and reigning, as having retrieved 
his character, as possessing so much power over 15 
his subjects at Bath that his opposition might be 
fatal to Sheridan's lectures on oratory.^ And all 
this is in 1763. The fact is, that Derrick died 
in 1769. 

In one note we read that Sir Herbert Croft, the 20 
author of that pompous and foolish account of Young, 
which appears among the Lives of the Poets, died 
in 1805.^ Another note in the same volume states 
that this same Sir Herbert Croft died at Paris, after 
residing abroad for fifteen years, on the 27th of April, 25 
1816." 

Mr. Croker informs us, that Sir William Forbes of 
Pitsligo, the author of the Life of Beattie, died in 
1816.^ A Sir William Forbes undoubtedly died in 
that year, but not the Sir William Forbes in question, 30 

' I. 394. "^ I. 404. ' IV. 321. 

4 IV. 428. 5 II. 262. 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 3 

whose death took place in 1806. It is notorious, 
indeed, that the biographer of Beattie lived just long 
enough to complete the history of his friend. Eight 
or nine years before the date which Mr. Croker has 
5 assigned for Sir William's death, Sir Walter Scott 
lamented that event in the introduction to the fourth 
canto of Marmion. Every school-girl knows the lines: 

" Scarce had lamented Forbes paid 
The tribute to his Minstrel's shade ; 
10 The tale of friendship scarce was told, 

Ere the narrator's heart was cold : 
Far may we search before we find 
A heart so manly and so kind ! " 

In one place we are told that Allan Ramsay, the 
15 painter, was born in 1709, and died in 1784;' in 
another, that he died in 1784, in the seventy-first year 
of his age.'^ 

In one place, Mr. Croker says, that at the com- 
mencement of the intimacy between Dr. Johnson and 
20 Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was twenty-five years 
old.'' In other places he says that Mrs. Thrale's 
thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth.* 
Johnson was born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. 
Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's 
25 seventieth, she could have been only twenty-one years 
old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. Croker, in another 
place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the com- 
plimentary lines which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's 
thirty-fifth birthday.^ If this date be correct, Mrs. 

' IV. 105. '^ V. 281. 3 1 510 

4 IV. 271, 322. 6 III. 463. 



4 MA CAUL AY ON- 

Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could have 
been only twenty-three when her acquaintance with 
Johnson commenced. Mr. Croker therefore gives 
us three different statements as to her age. Two of 
the three must be incorrect. We will not decide 5 
between them ; we will only say that the reasons which 
Mr. Croker gives for thinking that Mrs. Thrale was 
exactly thirty-five years old when Johnson was seventy, 
appear to us utterly frivolous. 

Again, Mr. Croker informs his readers that "Lord 10 
Mansfield survived Johnson full ten years."' Lord 
Mansfield survived Dr. Johnson just eight years and a 
quarter. 

Johnson found in the library of a French lady, 
whom he visited during his short visit to Paris, some 15 
works which he regarded with great disdain. "T 
looked," says he, "into the books in the lady's closet, 
and, in contempt, showed them to Mr. Thrale. 
Prince Titi, Bibliotheque des Fees, and other books." '^ 
"The History of Prince Titi," observes Mr. Croker, 20 
"was said to be the autobiography of Frederick 
Prince of Wales, but was probably written by Ralph 
his secretary." A more absurd note never was 
penned. The history of Prince Titi, to which Mr. 
Croker refers, whether written by Prince Frederick 25 
or by Ralph, was certainly never published. If Mr. 
Croker had taken the trouble to read with attention 
that very passage in Park's Royal and Noble Authors 
which he cites as his authority, he would have seen 
that the manuscript was given up to the government. 30 
Even if this memoir had been printed, it is not very 
' II. 151. "^ III. 271. 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 5 

likely to find its way into a French lady's bookcase. 
And would any man in his senses speak contemptu- 
ously of a French lady for having in her possession an 
English work, so curious and interesting as a Life of 

5 Prince Frederick, whether written by himself or by a 
confidential secretary, must have been? The history 
at which Johnson laughed was a very proper com- 
panion to the Bibliotheque des Fees, a fairy tale about 
good Prince Titi and naughty Prince Violent. Mr. 

loCroker may find it in the Magasin des Enfans, tlie 
first French book which the little girls of England 
read to their governesses. 

Mr. Croker states that Mr. Henry Bate, who after- 
wards assumed the name of Dudley, was proprietor of 

15 the Morning Herald, and fought a duel with George 
Robinson Stoney, in consequence of some attacks on 
Lady Strathmore which appeared in that paper.' 
Now, Mr. Bate was then connected, not wath the 
Morning Herald, but with the Morning Post; and the 

20 dispute took place before the Morning Herald was in 
existence. The duel was fought in January, 1777. 
The Chronicle of the Annual Register for that year 
contains an account of the transaction, and distinctly 
states that Mr. Bate was editor of the Morning Post. 

25 The Morning Herald, as any person may see by look- 
ing at any number of it, was not established till some 
years after this affair. For this blunder there is, we 
must acknowledge, some excuse; for it certainly 
seems almost incredible to a person living in our time 

30 that any human being should ever have stooped to 
fight with a writer in the Morning Post. 
ly. 196. 



6 MACAU LA Y ON 

"James de Duglas, " says Mr. Croker, "was re- 
quested by King Robert Bruce, in his last hours, to 
repair with his heart to Jerusalem, and humbly to 
deposit it at the sepulchre of our Lord, which he 
did in 1329."' Now, it is well known that he 5 
did no such thing, and for a very sufficient reason, 
because he was killed by the way. Nor was it in 
1329 that he set out. Robert Bruce died in 1329, 
and the expedition of Douglas took place in the 
following year, "Quand le printems vint et la sai- 10 
son," says Froissart, in June, 1330, says Lord Hailes, 
whom Mr. Croker cites as the authority for his 
statement. 

Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of 
Montrose was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650.^15 
There is not a forward boy at any school in Eng- 
land who does not know that the marquis was hanged. 
The account of the execution is one of the finest pas- 
sages in Lord Clarendon's History. We can scarcely 
suppose that Mr. Croker has never read that passage; 20 
and yet we can scarcely suppose that any person 
who has ever perused so noble and pathetic a his- 
tory can have utterly forgotten all its most striking 
circumstances. 

"Lord Townshend," says Mr. Croker, "was not 25 
secretary of state till 1720."' Can Mr. Croker pos- 
sibly be ignorant that Lord Townshend was made 
secretary of state at the accession of George L in 
1 7 14, that he continued to be secretary of state till he 
was displaced by the intrigues of Sunderland and 30 
Stanhope at the close of 17 16, and that he returned to 
' IV. 29. 2 II, 526. 3 III. 52. 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 7 

the ofifice of secretary of state, not in 1720, but in 
1721? 

Mr. Croker, indeed, is generally unfortunate in his 
statements respecting the Townshend family. He 

5 tells us that diaries Townshend, the chancellor of the 
exchequer, was "nephew of the prime minister, and 
son of a peer who was secretary of state, and leader 
of the House of Lords." ' Charles Townshend was 
not nephew, but grandnephew, of the Duke of New- 

10 castle, not son, but grandson, of the Lord Town- 
shend who was secretary of state, and leader of the 
House of Lords. 

"General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga," says 
Mr. Croker, "in March, 1778."^ General Burgoyne 

15 surrendered on the 17th of October, 1777. 

"Nothing," says Mr. Croker, "can be more un- 
founded than the assertion that Byng fell a, martyr to 
political party. By a strange coincidence of circum- 
stances, it happened that there was a total change of 

20 administration between his condemnation and his 
death ; so that one party presided at his trial and 
another at his execution: there can be no stronger 
proof that he was not a political martyr."' Now, 
what will our readers think of this writer when we 

25 assure them that this statement, so confidently made, 
respecting events so notorious, is absolutely untrue? 
One and the same administration was in office when 
the court-martial on Byng commenced its sittings, 
through the whole trial, at the condemnation and at 

30 the execution. In the month of November, 1756, 
the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke resigned; 
' III. 368. 2 IV. 222, * I. 298. 



8 MACAULAY ON 

the Duke of Devonshire became first lord of the 
treasury, and Mr. Pitt, secretary of state. This 
administration lasted till the month of April, 1757. 
Byng's court-martial began to sit on the 28th of 
December, 1756. He was shot on the 14th of March, 5 
1757. There is something at once diverting and pro- 
voking in the cool and authoritative manner in which 
Mr. Croker makes these random assertions. We do 
not suspect him of intentionally falsifying history. 
But of this high literary misdemeanor we do without 10 
hesitation accuse him, that he has no adequate sense 
of the obligation which a writer, who professes to relate 
facts, owes to the public. We accuse him of a negli- 
gence and an ignorance analogous to that crassa ncgli- 
gcntia and that crassa ignorantia^ on which the law 15 
animadverts in magistrates and surgeons, even when 
malice and corruption are not imputed. We accuse 
him of having undertaken a work which, if not per- 
formed with strict accuracy, must be very much worse 
than useless, and of having performed it as if the 20 
difference between an accurate and an inaccurate 
statement was not worth the trouble of looking into 
the most common book of reference. 

But we must proceed. These volumes contain 
mistakes more gross, if possible, than any that we 25 
have yet mentioned. Boswell has recorded some 
observations made by Johnson on the changes which 
had taken place in Gibbon's religious opinions. That 
Gibbon when a lad at Oxford turned Catholic is well 
known. "It is said," cried Johnson, laughing, "that 30 
he has been a Mohammedan." "This sarcasm," 
says the editor, "probably alludes to the tenderness 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 9 

with whicli Gibbon's malevolence to Christianity 
induced him to treat Mohammedanism in his history." 
Now, the sarcasm was uttered in 1776; and that part 
of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 

5 Empire which relates to Mohammedanism was not 
published till 1788, twelve years after the date of this 
conversation, and near four years after the death of 
Johnson.' 

"It was in the year 1761," says Mr. Croker, "that 

10 Goldsmith published his Vicar of Wakefield. This 
leads the editor to observe a more serious inaccuracy 
of Mrs. Piozzi than Mr. Boswell notices, when he 

' A defence of this blunder was attempted. That the celebrated 
chapters in which Gibbon has traced the progress of Mohammed- 

15 anism were not written in 1776 could not be denied. But it was 
confidently asserted that his partiality to Mohammedanism ap- 
peared in his first volume. This assertion is untrue. No passage 
which can by any art be construed into the faintest indication of 
the faintest partiality for Mohammedanism has ever been quoted 

20 or ever will be quoted from the first volume of the History of the 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

To what, then, it has been asked, could Johnson allude? Pos- 
sibly to some anecdote or some conversation of which all trace is 
lost. One conjecture may be offered, though with diffidence. 

25 Gibbon tells us in his memoirs, that at Oxford he took a fancy 
for studying Arabic, and was prevented from doing so by the 
remonstrances of his tutor. Soon after this the young man fell in 
with Bossuet's controversial writings, and was speedily converted 
by them to the Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of a gentle- 

30 man commoner would of course be for a time the chief subject of 
conversation in the common room of Magdalene. His whim 
about Arabic learning would naturally be mentioned, and would 
give occasion to some jokes about the probability of his turning 
Mussulman. If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently 

35 visited Oxford, was very likely to hear of them. 



lo MAC AULA V OAT 

says Johnson left lier table to go and sell the Vicar 
of Wakefield for Goldsmith. Now Dr. Johnson was 
not acquainted with the Thrales till 1765, four years 
after the book had been published."' Mr. Croker, 
in reprehending the fancied inaccuracy of Mrs. 5 
Thrale, has himself shown a degree of inaccuracy, or, 
to speak more properly, a degree of ignorance, hardly 
credible. In the first place, Johnson became ac- 
quainted with the Thrales, not in 1765, but in 1764, 
and during the last weeks of 1764 dined with them 10 
every Thursday, as is written in Mrs. Piozzi's anec- 
dotes. In the second place, Goldsmith published 
the Vicar of Wakefield, not in 1761, but in 1766. 
Mrs. Thrale does not pretend to remember the precise 
date of the summons which called Johnson from her 15 
table to the help of his friend. She says only that it 
was near the beginning of her acquaintance with 
Johnson, and certainly not later than 1766. Her 
accuracy is therefore completely vindicated. It was 
probably after one of her Thursday dinners in 176420 
that the celebrated scene of the landlady, the sheriff's 
officer, and the bottle of Madeira, took place. ° 

The very page which contains this monstrous 
blunder, contains another blunder, if possible, more 
monstrous still. Sir Joseph Mawbey, a foolish member 25 
of Parliament, at whose speeches and whose pigstyes 
the wits of Brookes's were, fifty years ago, in tlie 
habit of laughing most unmercifully, stated, on the 
authority of Garrick, that Johnson, while sitting in a 

' V. 409. 30 

* This paragraph has been altered ; and a slight inaccuracy, 
immaterial to the argument, has been removed. 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 1 1 

coffee-house at Oxford, about the time of his Doc- 
tor's degree, used some contemptuous expressions 
respecting Home's play and Macpherson's Ossian. 
"Many men" he said, "many women, and many 

5 children, might have written Douglas." Mr. Croker 
conceives that he has detected an inaccuracy, and 
glories over poor Sir Joseph in a most characteristic 
manner. "I have quoted this anecdote solely with 
the view of showing to how little credit hearsay anec- 

lo dotes are in general entitled. Here is a story pub- 
lished by Sir Joseph Mawbey, a member of the House 
of Commons, and a person every way worthy of credit, 
who says he had it from Garrick. Now mark: John- 
son's visit to Oxford, about the time of his Doctor's 

15 degree, was in 1754, the first time he had been there 
since he left the university. But Douglas was not 
acted till 1756, and Ossian not published till 1760. 
All, therefore, that is new in Sir Joseph Mawbey's 
story is false." ' Assuredly we need not go far to find 

20 imple proof that a member of the House of Commons 
may commit a very gross error. Now mark, say we, 
in the language of Mr. Croker. The fact is, that 
Johnson took his Master's degree in 1754," and his 
Doctor's degree in 1775.' In the spring of 1776* he 

25 paid a visit to Oxford, and at this visit a conversation 
respecting the works of Home and Macpherson might 
have taken place, and, in all probability, did take 
place. The only real objection to the story Mr. 
Croker has missed. Boswell states, apparently on the 

30 best authority, that as early at least as the year 1763, 
Johnson, in conversation with Blair, used the same 
' V. 409. 2 I 262. 3 III. 205. ■» III. 326. 



12 MACAU LA Y ON 

expressions respecting Ossian, which Sir Joseph repre- 
sents him as having used respecting Douglas.' Sir 
Joseph, or Garrick, confounded, we suspect, the two 
stories. But their error is venial, compared with that 
of Mr. Croker. 5 

We will not multiply instances of this scandalous 
inaccuracy. It is clear that a writer who, even when 
warned by the text on which he is commenting, falls 
into such mistakes as these, is entitled to no confi- 
dence whatever. Mr. Croker has committed an error lo 
of five years with respect to the publication of Gold- 
smith's novel, an error of twelve years with respect to 
the publication of part of Gibbon's History, an error 
of twenty-one years with respect to an event in John- 
son's life so important as the taking of the doctoral 15 
degree. Two of these three errors he has committed, 
while ostentatiously displaying his own accuracy, and 
correcting what he represents as the loose assertions 
of others. How can his readers take on trust his 
statements concerning the births, marriages, divorces, 20 
and deaths of a crowd of people whose names are 
scarcely known to this generation? It is not likely that 
a person who is ignorant of what almost everybody 
knows can know that of which almost everybody is 
ignorant. We did not open this book with any wish 25 
to find blemishes in it. We have made no curious 
researches. The work itself, and a very common 
knowledge of literary and political history, have 
enabled us to detect the mistakes which we have 
pointed out, and many other mistakes of the same 30 
kind. We must say, and we say it with regret, that 
' I. 405- 



BOS WELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 13 

we do not consider the authority of Mr. Croker, 
unsupported by other evidence, as sufficient to justify 
any writer who may follow him in relating a single 
anecdote or in assigning a date to a single event. 

5 Mr. Croker shows almost as much ignorance and 
heedlessness in his criticisms as in his statements con- 
cerning facts. Dr. Johnson said, very reasonably as 
it appears to us, that some of the satires of Juvenal 
are too gross for imitation. Mr. Croker, who, by the 

10 way, is angry with Jolinson for defending Prior's tales 
against the charge of indecency, resents this aspersion 
on Juvenal, and indeed refuses to believe that the 
doctor can have said anything so absurd. "He 
probably said — some passages of them — for there are 

15 none of Juvenal's satires to which the same objec- 
tion may be made as to one of Horace's, that it is 
altogether gxo?>% zx^di licentious.'" Surely Mr. Croker 
can never have read the second and ninth satires of 
Juvenal. 

20 Indeed, the decisions of this editor on points of 
classical learning, though pronounced in a very 
authoritative tone, are generally such that, if a school- 
boy under our care were to utter them, our soul 
assuredly should not spare for his crying. It is no 

25 disgrace to a gentleman who has been engaged during 
near thirty years in political life that he has forgotten 
his Greek and Latin. But he becomes justly ridicu- 
lous if, when no longer able to construe a plain sen- 
tence, he affects to sit in judgment on the most deli- 

3ocate questions of style and metre. From one blunder, 
a blunder which no good scholar would have made, 
' I. 167. 



14 MACAU LA Y OlSr 

Mr. Croker was saved, as he informs us, by Sir 
Robert Peel, who quoted a passage exactly in point 
from Horace. We heartily wish that Sir Robert, 
whose classical attainments are well known, had been 
more frequently consulted. Unhappily he was not c 
always at his friend's elbow; and we have therefore a 
rich abundance of the strangest errors. Boswell has 
preserved a poor epigram by Johnson, inscribed "Ad 
Lauram parituram." Mr. Croker censures the poet 
for applying the word puella to a lady in Laura's situ- lo 
ation, and for talking of the beauty of Lucina. 
"Lucina, " he says, "was never famed for her 
beauty." ' If Sir Robert Peel had seen this note, he 
probably would have again refuted Mr. Croker's criti- 
cisms by an appeal to Horace. In the secular ode, 15 
Lucina is used as one of the names of Diana, and the 
beauty of Diana is extolled by all the most orthodox 
doctors of the ancient mythology, from Homer in his 
Odyssey to Claudian in his Rape of Proserpine. In 
another ode, Horace describes Diana as the goddess 20 
who assists the "laborantes utero puellas." But we 
are ashamed to detain our readers with this fourth- 
form learning. 

Boswell found, in his tour to the Hebrides, an 
inscription written by a Scotch minister. It runs 25 
thus: "Joannes Macleod, &c., gentis su?e Philarchus, 
&c., Florae Macdonald matrimoniali vinculo conju- 
gatus turrem hanc Beganodunensem procevorum habi- 
taculum longe vetustissimum, diu penitus labefactatam, 
anno aerae vulgaris mdclxxxvi. instauravit." — "The 30 
minister," says Mr. Croker, "seems to have been no 

' I. 133- 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 15 

contemptible Latinist. Is not Philarchus a very 
happy term to express the paternal and kindly 
authority of the head of a clan?" ' The composition 
of this eminent Latinist, short as it is, contains 

5 several words that are just as much Coptic as Latin, 
to say nothing of the incorrect structure of the sen- 
tence. The word Philarchus, even if it were a happy 
term expressing a paternal and kindly authority, 
would prove nothing for the minister's Latin, what- 

10 ever it might prove for his Greek. But it is clear 
that the word Philarchus means, not a man who rules 
by love, but a man who loves rule. The Attic writers 
of the best age use the word qjiXapxo^ in the sense 
which we assign to it. Would Mr. Croker translate 

15 qjiXoGoqjoi, a man who acquires wisdom by means 
of love, or qnXouspStf?^ a man who makes money by 
means of love? In fact, it requires no Bentley or 
Casaubon to perceive, that Philarchus is merely a false 
spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe. 

20 Mr. Croker has favored us with some Greek of his 
own. "At the altar," says Dr. Johnson, "I recom- 
mended my 5 (pJ\ "These letters," says the editor, 
"(which Dr. Strahan seems not to have understood) 
probably mean ^vt]toi qtiXoi, departed friends/'"^ 

25 • n. 458. 

'' IV. 251. An attempt was made to vindicate this blunder by 
quoting a grossly corrupt passage from the 'lnhLdsQ of Euripides : 
^a-di Kal avriaaov yovdruv, iwc x^ipn ^akovaa, 
TEKVuv TE dvaTO)v KOfiioai Ss/^a^. 
30 The true reading, as every scholar knows, is, t£kvo)v tekveutuv 
KOfiiaai de/iag. Indeed, without this emendation it would not be 
easy to construe the words, even if dvaruv could bear the meaning 
which Mr. Croker assigns to it. 



t6 MACAU la V on 

Johnson was not a first-rate Greek scholar; but he 
knew more Greek than most boys when they leave 
school; and no schoolboy could venture to use the 
word 3'v?fToi in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes 
to it without imminent danger of a flogging. 5 

Mr. Croker has also given us a specimen of his skill 
in translating Latin. Johnson wrote a note in which 
he consulted his friend, Dr. Lawrence, on the pro- 
priety of losing some blood. The note contains these 
words: — "Si per te licet, imperatur nuncio Holderum 10 
ad me deducere. " Johnson should rather have written 
"imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is 
perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the messenger has 
orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker tran- 
slates the words as follows: ' 'If you consent, pray tell 15 
the messenger to bring Holder to me."' If Mr. 
Croker is resolved to write on points of classical learn- 
ing, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour 
every morning to our old friend Corderius. 

Indeed, we cannot open any volume of this work in 20 
any place, and turn it over for two minutes in any 
direction, without lighting on a blunder. Johnson, 
in his Life of Tickell, stated that a poem entitled The 
Royal Progress, which appears in the last volume of 
the Spectator, was written on the accession of George 25 
I. The word "arrival" was afterwards substituted 
for "accession." "The reader will observe," says 
Mr. Croker, "that the Whig term accession, which 
might imply legality, was altered into a statement of 
the simple fact of King George's arrival.'"" Now 30 
Johnson, though a bigoted Tory, was not quite such a 
' V. 17. 5 IV. 425. 



BOSIVELLS LIFE OF JOHNSOX. 1 7 

fool as Mr. Croker here represents him to be. In the 
Life of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, which stands a 
very few pages from the Life of Tickell, mention is 
made of the accession of Anne, and of the accession of 

5 George I. The word arrival was used in the Life of 
Tickell for the simplest of all reasons. It was used 
because the subject of the poem called The Royal 
Progress was the arrival of the king, and not his 
accession, which took place near two months before 

lohis arrival. 

The editor's want of perspicacity is indeed very 
amusing. He is perpetually telling us that he cannot 
understand something in the text which is as plain as 
language can make it. "Mattaire," said Dr. John- 

15 son, "wrote Latin verses from time to time, and pub- 
lised a set in his old age, which he called Sctiilia^ in 
which he shows so little learning or taste in writing as 
to make Carteret a dactyl,"' Hereupon we have 
this note: "The editor does not understand this 

20 objection, nor the following observation." The fol- 
lowing observation, which Mr. Croker cannot under- 
stand, is simply this: "In matters of genealogy," says 
Johnson, "it is necessary to give the bare names as 
they are. But in poetry and in prose of any elegance 

25 in the writing, they require to have inflection given to 
them." If Mr. Croker had told Johnson that this 
was unintelligible, the doctor would probably have 
replied, as he replied on another occasion, "I have 
found you a reason, sir; I am not bound to find you 

30 an understanding." Every body who knows any 
thing of Latinity knows that, in genealogical tables, 
• IV. 335. 



IS AIACAULAY ON 

Joannes Baro de Carteret, or Vice-comes de Car- 
teret, may be tolerated, but that in compositions which 
pretend to elegance, Carteretus, or some other form 
which admits of inflection, ought to be used. 

All our readers have doubtless seen the two dis- 5 
tichs of Sir William Jones, respecting the division of 
the time of a lawyer. One of the distichs is trans- 
lated from some old Latin lines; the other is original. 
The former runs thus: 

" Six hours to sleep, to law's grave study six, lo 

Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix." 

"Rather," says Sir William Jones, 

" Six hours to law, to soothing slumbers seven, 
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven." 

The second couplet puzzles Mr. Croker strangely. 15 
"Sir William," says he, "has shortened his day to 
twenty-three hours, and the general advice of 'all to 
heaven' destroys the peculiar appropriation of a cer- 
tain period to religious exercises."' Now, we did 
not think that it was in human dulness to miss the 20 
meaning of the lines so completely. Sir William dis- 
tributes twenty-three hours among various employ- 
ments. One hour is thus left for devotion. The 
reader expects that the verse will end with "and one 
to heaven." The whole point of the lines consists in 25 
the unexpected substitution of "all" for "one." The 
conceit is wretched enough; but it is perfectly intelli- 
gible, and never, we will venture to say, perplexed 
man, woman, or child before. 

1 V. 233. 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON: 19 

Poor Tom Davies, after failing in business, tried 
to live by his pen. Johnson called him "an author 
generated by the corruption of a bookseller." This is 
a very obvious and even a commonplace allusion to the 

5 famous dogma of the old physiologists. Dryden made 
a similar allusion to that dogma before Johnson was 
born. Mr. Croker, however, is unable to understand 
what the doctor meant. "The expression," he says, 
"seems not quite clear." And he proceeds to talk 

10 about the generation of insects, about bursting into 
gaudier life, and Heaven knows what.' 

There is a still stranger instance of the editor's 
talent for finding out difficulty in what is perfectly 
plain. "No man," said Johnson, "can now be made 

15 a bishop for his learning and piety." "From this too 
just observation," says Boswell, "there are some emi- 
nent exceptions." Mr. Croker is puzzled by Bos- 
well's very natural and simple language. "That a 
general observation should be pronounced too Just, by 

20 the very person who admits that it is not universally 
just, is not a little odd." ^ 

A very large proportion of the two thousand five 
hundred notes which the editor boasts of having 
added to those of Boswell and Malone consists of the 

25 flattest and poorest reflections, reflections such as the 
least intelligent reader is quite competent to make for 
himself, and such as no intelligent reader would think 
it worth while to utter aloud. They remind us of 
nothing so much as of those profound and interesting 

30 annotations which are pencilled by sempstresses and 
apothecaries' boys on the dog-eared margins of novels 
' IV. 323. ^ III. 228. 



20 MACAU LA Y ON 

borrowed from circulating libraries; "How beauti- 
ful!" "Cursed prosy I " "I don't like Sir Reginald 
Malcolm at all." "I think Pelham is a sad dandy." 
Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping us in our progress 
through the most delightful narrative in the language, 5 
to observe that re.ally Dr. Johnson was very rude, 
that he talked more for victory than for truth, that 
his taste for port wine with capillaire in it was very 
odd, that Boswell was impertinent, that it was foolish 
in Mrs. Thrale to marry the music-master; and so 10 
forth. 

We cannot speak more favorably of the manner in 
which the notes are written than of the matter of 
which they consist. We find in every page words 
used in wrong senses, and constructions which violate 15 
the plainest rules of grammar. We have the vulgar- 
ism of "mutual friend" for "common friend." We 
have "fallacy" used as synonymous with "falsehood." 
We have many such inextricable labryrinths of pro- 
nouns as that which follows: "Lord Erskine was /ond 20 
of this anecdote; he told it to the editor the first time 
that he had the honor of being in his company." 
Lastly, we have a plentiful supply of sentences resem- 
bling those which we subjoin. "Markland, who^ with 
Jortin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contempo- 25 
raries of great eminence."' "Warburton himself did 
not feel, as Mr. Boswell was disposed to think hedid, 
kindly or gratefully of Johnson." ^ "It was him that 
Horace Walpole called a man who never made a bad 
figure but as an author." ' One or two of these sole- 30 
cisms should perhaps be attributed to the printer, who 
' IV. 377. ' IV. 415. ' II. 461. 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 2 1 

has certainly done his best to fill both the text and 
the notes with all sorts of blunders. In truth, he and 
the editor have between them made the book so bad 
that we do not well see how it could have been 

5 worse. 

When we turn from the commentary of Mr. Croker 
to the work of our old friend Boswell, we find it not 
only worse printed than in any other edition with 
which we are acquainted, but mangled in the most 

lo wanton manner. Much that Boswell inserted in his 
narrative is, without the shadow of a reason, degraded 
to the appendix. The editor has also taken upon him- 
self to alter or omit passages which he considers as 
indecorous. This prudery is quite unintelligible to 

15 us. There is nothing immoral in Boswell's book, 
nothing which tends to inflame the passions. He 
sometimes uses plain words. But if this be a taint 
.which requires expurgation, it would be desirable to 
begin by expurgating the morning and evening 

20 lessons. The delicate office which Mr. Croker has 
undertaken he has performed in the most capricious 
manner. One strong, old-fashioned English word, 
familiar to all who read their Bibles, is changed for a 
softer synonyme in some passages, and suffered to 

25 stand unaltered in others. In one place a faint 
allusion made by Johnson to an indelicate subject, an 
allusion so faint that, till Mr. Croker's note pointed 
it out to us, we had never noticed it, and of which we 
are quite sure that the meaning would never be dis- 

30 covered by any of those for whose sake books are 
expurgated, is altogether omitted. In another place, 
a coarse and stupid jest of Dr. Taylor on the same 



22 MACAULAY ON 

subject, expressed in the broadest language, almost 
the only passage, as far as we remember, in all Bos- 
well's book, which we should have been inclined to 
leave out, is suffered to remain. 

We complain, however, much more of the additions 5 
than of tlie omissions. We have half of Mrs. Thrale's 
book, scraps of Mr. Tyers, scraps of Mr. Murphy, 
scraps of Mr. Cradock, long prosings of Sir John 
Hawkins, and connecting observations by Mr. Croker 
himself, inserted into the midst of Boswell's text. 10 
To this practice we most decidedly object. An editor 
might as well publish Thucydides with extracts from 
Diodorus interspersed, or incorporate the Lives of 
Suetonius with the History and Annals of Tacitus. 
Mr. Croker tells us, indeed, that he has done only 15 
what Boswell wished to do, and was prevented from 
doing by the law of copyright. We doubt this greatly. 
Boswell has studiously abstained from availing him- 
self of the information given by his rivals, on many 
occasions on which he might have cited them without 20 
subjecting himself to the charge of piracy. Mr. 
Croker has himself, on one occasion, remarked very 
justly tliat Boswell was unwilling to owe any obliga- 
tion to Hawkins. But, be this as it may, if Boswell 
had quoted from Sir John and from Mrs. Thrale, 25 
he would have been guided by his own taste and 
judgment in selecting his quotations. On what Bos- 
well quoted he would have commented with perfect 
freedom ; and the borrowed passages, so selected, 
and accompanied by such comments, would have 30 
become original. They would have dovetailed into 
the work. No hitch, no crease, would have been dis- 



BO SWELL'S LLFL: OF JOHNSON. 2.^ 

cernible. The whole would appear one and indi- 
visible: 

■ " Ut per Ixve severos 
Effiindat junctura ungues." 

5 This is not the case with Mr. Croker's insertions. 
They are not chosen as Boswell would have chosen 
them. They are not introduced as Boswell would 
have introduced them. They differ from the quota- 
tions scattered through the original Life of Johnson, 

loas a withered bough stuck in the ground differs from 
a tree skilfully transplanted with all its life about it. 

Not only do these anecdotes disfigure Boswell's 
book ; they are themselves disfigured by being 
inserted in his book. The charm of Mrs. Thrale's 

15 little volume is utterly destroyed. The feminine 
quickness of observation, the feminine softness of 
heart, the colloquial incorrectness and vivacity of 
style, the little amusing airs of a half-learned lady, 
the delightful garrulity, the "dear Doctor Johnson," 

20 the "it was so comical," all disappear in Mr. Croker's 
quotations. The lady ceases to speak in the first 
person ; and her anecdotes, in the process of trans- 
fusion, become as flat as Champagne in decanters, or 
Herodotus in Beloe's version. Sir John Hawkins, 

25 it is true, loses nothing; and for the best of reasons: 
Sir John had nothing to lose. 

The course which Mr. Croker ought to have taken 
is quite clear. He should have reprinted Boswell's 
narrative precisely as Boswell wrote it; and in the 

30 notes of the appendix he should have placed any 
anecdotes Avhich he might have thought it advisable 



24 MA CAUL AY ON 

to quote from other writers. This would have been 
a much more convenient course for the reader, who 
lias now constantly to keep his eye on the margin in 
order to see whether he is perusing Boswell, Mrs. 
Thrale, Murphy, Hawkins, Tyers, Cradock, or Mr. 5 
Croker. We greatly doubt whether even the Tour to 
the Hebrides ought to have been inserted in the midst 
of the Life. There is one marked distinction between 
the two works. Most of the Tour was seen by John- 
son in manuscript. It does not appear that he ever 10 
saw any part of the Life. 

We love, we own, to read the great productions of 
the human mind as they were written. We have this 
feeling even about scientific treatises ; though we know 
that the sciences are always in a state, of progression, 15 
and that the alterations made by a modern editor in 
an old book on any branch of natural or political phi- 
losophy are likely to be improvements. Some errors 
have been detected by writers of this generation in the 
speculations of Adam Smith. A short cut has been 20 
made to much knowledge at which Sir Isaac Newton 
arrived through arduous and circuitous paths. Yet 
we still look with peculiar veneration on the Wealth 
of Nations and on the Principia, and should regret to 
see either of those great works garbled even by the 25 
ablest hands. But in works which owe much of their 
interest to the character and situation of the writers 
the case is infinitely stronger. What man of taste and 
feeling can endure rifaciiiienti, harmonies, abridg- 
ments, expurgated editions? Who ever reads a stage 30 
copy of a play when he can procure the original? 
Who ever cut open Mrs. Siddons's Milton? Who 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 25 

ever got through ten pages of Mr. Gilpin's translation 
of John Banyan's Pilgrim into modern English? 
Who would lose, in the confusion of a Diatessaron, 
the peculiar charm wliich belongs to the narrative of 
5 the disciple whom Jesus loved? The feeling of a 
reader who has become intimate with any great orig- 
inal work is that which Adam expressed towards his 

bride : 

" Should God create another Eve, and I 
10 Anotlier rib afford, yet loss of thee 

Would never from my heart." 

No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will fill 
the void left by the original. The second beauty may 
be equal or superior to the first; but still it is not she. 

15 The reasons which Mr. Croker has given for incor- 
porating passages from Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. 
Thrale with the narrative of Boswell would vindicate 
the adulteration of half the classical works in the lan- 
guage. If Pepys's Diary and Mrs. Hutchinson's 

20 Memoirs had been published a hundred years ago, no 
human being can doubt that Mr. Hume would have 
made use of those books in his History of Eng- 
land. But would it, on that account, be judicious 
in a writer of our own times to publish an edition 

25 of Hume's History of England, in which large 
extracts from Pepys and Mrs. Hutchinson should be 
incorporated with the original text? Surely not. 
Hume's history, be its faults what they may, is now 
one great entire work, the production of one vigorous 

30 mind, working on such materials as were within its 
reach. Additions made by another hand may supply 
a particular deficiency, but would grievQUsly injure 



26 MACAULAY ON 

the general effect. With Boswell's book the case is 
stronger. There is scarcely, in the whole compass of 
literature, a book which bears interpolation so ill. 
We know no production of the human mind which 
has so much of what may be called the race, so much 5 
of the peculiar flavor of the soil from which it sprang. 
The work could never have been written if the writer 
had not been precisely what he was. His character 
is displayed in every page, and this display of char- 
acter gives a delightful interest to many passages 10 
which have no other interest. 

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very 
great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first 
of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly 
the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more 15 
decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first 
of biographers. He has no second. He has dis- 
tanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not 
worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the 
rest nowhere. 20 

We are not sure that there is in the whole history 
of the human intellect so strange a phsenomenon as 
this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived 
have written biography. Boswell was one of the 
smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them 25 
all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his own 
account or to the united testimony of all who knew 
him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. 
Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed 
his only chance of immortality by not having been 30 
alive when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerk used 
bis nanje as a proverbial expression for a bore, He 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 27 

was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant 
society which has owed to him the greater part of its 
fame. He was always laying himself at the feet of 
some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and 

5 trampled upon. He was always earning some ridicu- 
lous nickname, and then "binding it as a crown unto 
him," not merely in metaphor, but literally. He 
exhibited himself, at the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all 
the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a 

10 placard round his hat bearing the inscription of Cor- 
sica Boswell. In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the 
world that at Edinburgh he was known by the appella- 
tion of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shal- 
low and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family 

15 pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a 
born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an 
eavesdropper,, a common butt in the taverns of Lon- 
don, so curious to know every body who was talked 
about, that, Tory and high Churchman as he was, he 

20 manoeuvred, we have been told, for an introduction 
to Tom Paine, so vain of the most childish distinc- 
tions, that when he had been to court, he drove to the 
office where his book was printing without changing 
his clothes, and summoned all the printers' devils 

25 to admire his new ruffles and sword; such was this 
man, and such he was content and proud to be. 
Every thing which another man would have hidden, 
every thing the publication of which would have made 
another man hang himself, was matter of gay and 

30 clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind. 
What silly things he said, what bitter retorts he pro- 
voked, how at one place he was troubled with evil 



28 MACAU LA Y ON 

presentiments which came to nothing, liow at another 
place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the 
prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had bitten 
liim, how he went to see men hanged and came away 
maudUn, how he added five hundred pounds to the 5 
fortune of one of his babies because she was not 
scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened 
out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted 
him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he 
was at Lady Cork's one evening and how much his 10 
merriment annoyed the ladies, how impertinent he 
was to the Duchess of Argyle and with what stately 
contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel 
Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent ob- 
trusiveness, how his father and the very wife of his 15 
bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries ; all these 
things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had 
been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. 
All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his 
vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles 20 
in the air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency, 
a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool 
of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel 
in the whole history of mankind. He has used many 
people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as 25 
himself. 

That such a man should have written one of the 
best books in the world is strange enough. But this 
is not all. Many persons who have conducted them- 
selves foolishly in active life, and whose conversa- 30 
tion has indicated no superior powers of mind, have 
left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSOM. 29 

described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired 
idiot, and by another as a being 

" Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." 

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His 

5 blunders would not come in amiss among the stories 
of Hierocles. But these men attained literary emi- 
nence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained 
it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a 
great fool, he would never have been a great writer. 

10 Without all the qualities which made him the jest and 
the torment of those among wdiom he lived, without 
the ofificiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, 
the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he 
never could have produced so excellent a book. He 

15 was a slave proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, con- 
vinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were vir- 
tues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to 
repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest viola- 
tion of confidence, a man without delicacy, without 

20 shame, without sense enough to know when he was 
hurting the feelings of others or when he was expos- 
ing himself to derision; and because he was all this, 
he has, in an important department of literature, 
immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clar- 

25 endon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson. 

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to emi- 
nence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There 
is not in all his books a single remark of his own on 
literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not 

30 either commonplace or absurd. His dissertations on 
hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and on the 



3° MACAULAY OM 

entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. 
To say that these passages are sophistical would be to 
pay them an extravagant compliment. They have no 
pretence to argument, or even to meaning. He has 
reported innumerable observations made by himself 5 
in the course of conversation. Of those observations 
we do not remember one Avhich is above the intel- 
lectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed 
many of his own letters, and in these letters he is 
always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, 10 
taste, all those things which are generally considered 
as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to 
him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a 
retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been 
a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of them- 15 
selves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but 
because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, 
they have made him immortal. 

Those parts of his book which, considered ab- 
stractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful 20 
when we read them as illustrations of the character of 
the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good dra- 
matically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, the 
clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced con- 
sonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the 25 
most candid. Other men who have pretended to 
lay open their own hearts, Rousseau, for example, 
and Lord Byron, have evidently written with a con- 
stant view to effect, and are to be then most distrusted 
when they seem to be most sincere. There is scarcely 30 
any man who would not rather accuse himself of great 
crimes and of dark and temjjestuous passions than pro- 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF J6HNS0M. %\ 

claim all his little vanities and wild fancies. It would 
be easier to find a person who would avow actions like 
those of Caesar Borgia or Danton, than one who would 
publish a daydream like those of Alnaschar and Mal- 

5 volio. Those weaknesses which most men keep cov- 
ered up in the most secret places of the mind, not to 
be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of love, were 
precisely the weaknesses which Boswell paraded before 
all the world. He was perfectly frank, because the 

lo weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his 
spirits prevented him from knowing when he made 
himself ridiculous. His book resembles nothing so 
much as the conversation of the inmates of the Palace 
of Truth. 

15 His fame is great; and it will, we have no doubt, 
be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and 
indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remem- 
ber no other case in which the world has made so 
great a distinction between a book and its author. In 

20 general, the book and the author are considered as 
one. To admire the book is to admire the author. 
The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the 
only exception, to this rule. His work is universally 
allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminently orig- 

25 inal ; yet it has brought him nothing but contempt. 
All the world reads it; all .the world delights in it; 
yet we do not remember ever to have read or ever to 
have heard any expression of respect and admiration 
for the man to whom we owe so much instruction and 

30 amusement. While edition after edition of his book 
was coming forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was 
ashamed of it, and hated to hear it mentioned. This 



32 MacauLay on 

feeling was natural and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw 
that, in proportion to the celebrity of the work, was the 
degradation of the author. The very editors of this 
unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten their 
allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who took 5 
arms by the authority of the king against his person, 
have attacked the writer while doing homage to the 
writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has published 
two thousand five hundred notes on the life of John- 
son, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biographer ro 
whose performance he has taken such pains to illus- 
trate without some expression of contempt. 

An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not; yet 
the malignity of the most malignant satirist could 
scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. 15 
Having himself no sensibility to derision and con- 
tempt, he took it for granted that all others were 
equally callous. He was not ashamed to exhibit him- 
self to the whole world as a common spy, a common 
tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of 20 
poverty, and to tell a hundred stories of his own pert- 
ness and folly, and of the insults which his pertness and 
folly brought upon him. It was natural that he should 
show little discretion in cases in which the feeling or 
the honor of others might be concerned. No man, 25 
surely, ever published such stories respecting persons 
whom he professed to love and revere. He would 
infallibly have made his hero as contemptible as he 
has made himself, had not his hero really possessed 
some moral and intellectual qualities of a very high 30 
order. The best proof that Johnson was really an 
extraordinary man is tliat his character, instead of 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOL^MSOM. 33 

being degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly 
raised by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses 
are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were 
exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. 

5 Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his 
fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, 
is better known to us than any other man in history. 
Every thing about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, 
his face, his scrofula, his St.Vitus's dance, his rolling 

lowalk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too 
clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his 
insatiable appetite for fish -sauce and veal-pie with 
plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of 
touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious prac- 

^Stice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morn- 
ing slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contor- 
tions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings, his 
vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic 
wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tem- 

2opestuous rage, his queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and 
blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the negro 
Frank, all are as familiar to us as the objects by 
which we have been surrounded from childhood. 
But we have no minute information respecting those 

25 years of Johnson's life during which his character and 
his manners became immutably fixed. We know 
him, not as he was known to the men of his own 
generation, but as he was known to men whose father 
he might have been. That celebrated club of which 

30 he was the most distinguished member contained few 
persons who could remember a time when his fame 
was not fully established and his habits completely 



34 MAC AULA Y OM 

formed. He had made himself a name in literature 
while Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. He 
was about twenty years older than Burke, Goldsmith, 
and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty years older than 
Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and about forty 5 
years older than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and 
Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the two writers 
from whom we derive most of our knowledge respect- 
ing him, never saw him till long after he was fifty 
years old, till most of his great works had become 10 
classical, and till the pension bestowed on him by the 
Crown had placed him above poverty. Of those 
eminent men who were his most intimate associates 
toward the close of his life, the only one, as far as we 
remember, who knew him during the first ten or 15 
twelve years of his residence in the capital, was David 
Garrick; and it does not appear that, during those 
years, David Garrick saw much of his fellow-towns- 
man. 

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time 20 
when the condition of a man of letters was most miser- 
able and degraded. It was a dark night between 
two sunny days. The age of patronage had passed 
away. The age of general curiosity and intelligence 
had not arrived. The number of readers is at 25 
present so great that a popular author may subsist in 
comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In 
the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of 
George the First, even such men as Congreve and 
Addison would scarcely have been able to live like 30 
gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. But 
the deficiency of the natural demand for literature 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSOI^. 35 

was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by 
artificial encouragement, by a vast system of bounties 
and premiums. 'There was, perhaps, never a time at 

5 which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, 
at wliich men who could write well found such easy 
admittance into the most distinguished society, and 
to the highest honors of the state. The chiefs of 
both the great parties into which the kingdom was 

lo divided patronized literature with emulous munifi- 
cence. Congreve, when he had scarcely attained his 
majority, was rewarded for his first comedy with 
places which made him independent for life. Smith, 
though his Hippolytus and Phaedra failed, would have 

15 been consoled with three hundred a year but for his 
own folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but 
also land-surveyor of the customs in the port of Lon- 
don, clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, 
and secretary of the Presentations to the Lord Chan- 

2ocellor. Hughes was secretary to the Commissions of 
the Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Prerog- 
ative Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of 
Appeals and of the Board of Trade. ' Newton was 
Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were em- 

25 ployed in embassies of high dignity and importance. 
Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk 
mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and- 
twenty. It was to a poem on the Death of Charles 
the Second, and to the City and Country Mouse, that 

30 Montague owed his introduction into public life, his 
earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the Ex- 
chequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice 



36 MAC A UL AY OAT 

of the queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford, with 
his white staff in his hand, passed through the crowd 
of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that ingenious 
writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a commissioner 
of stamps and a member of Parliament. Arthur 5 
Mainwaring was a commissioner of the customs, and 
auditor of the imprest. Tickell was secretary to the 
Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison was secretary 
of state. 

This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as 10 
it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the only 
noble versifier in the court of Charles the Second who 
possessed talents for composition which were inde- 
pendent of the aid of a coronet. Montague owed 
his elevation to the favor of Dorset, and imitated 15 
through the whole course of his life the liberality to 
which he was himself so greatly indebted. The Tory 
leaders, Harley and Bolingbroke in particular, vied 
with the chiefs of the Whig party in zeal for the 
encouragement of letters. But soon after the acces- 20 
sion of the house of Hanover a change took place. 
The supreme power passed to a man who cared little 
for poetry ot' eloquence. The importance of the 
House of Commons was constantly on tlie increase. 
■ The government was under the necessity of bartering 25 
for parliamentary support much of that patronage 
which had been employed in fostering literary merit; 
and Walpole was by no means inclined to divert any 
part of the fund of corruption to purposes which he con- 
sidered as idle. He had eminent talents for govern- 30 
ment and for debate. But he had paid little attention 
to books, and felt little respect for authors. One of -<^ 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 37 

the coarse jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury 
Williams, was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's 
Seasons or Richardson's Pamela. He had observed 
that some of the distinguished writers whom the favor 

5 of Halifax had turned into statesmen had been mere 
encumbrances to their party, dawdlers in office, and 
mutes in Parliament. During the whole course of his 
administration, therefore, he scarcely befriended a 
single man of genius. The best writers of the age 

logave all their support to the opposition, and contrib- 
uted to excite that discontent which, after plunging 
the nation into a foolish and unjust war, overthrew 
the minister to make room for men less able and 
equally immoral. The opposition could reward its 

15 eulogists with little more than promises and caresses. 
St. James's would give nothing: Leicester house had 
nothing to give. 

Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his 
literary career, a writer had little to hope from the 

20 patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage 
of the public did not yet furnish the means of com- 
fortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers 
to authors were so low that a man of considerable 
talents and unremitting industry could do little more 

25 than provide for the day which was passing over him. 
The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. The thin 
and withered ears had devoured the good ears. The 
season of rich harvests was over, and the period of 
fcimine had begun. All that is squalid and miserable 

30 might now be summed up in the word Poet. That 
word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, 
familiar with compters and sponging-houses, and per- 



38 MACAULAY ON 

fectly qualified to decide on the comparative merits 
of tlie Common Side in the King's Bench prison and 
of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest 
pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if 
their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were 5 
not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally 
acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, 
to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to 
translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, 
to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary 10 
and pestilence to another, from Grub Street to St. 
George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the 
alleys behind St. Martin's church, to sleep on a bulk 
in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in 
December, to die in an hospital and to be buried in 15 
a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer 
who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have 
been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the 
Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parliament, and 
would have been intrusted with embassies to the High 20 
Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have 
found encouragement scarcely less munificent in 
Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row. i^- 
(^i.' As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every 
walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary 25 
character, assuredly, has always had its share of 
faults: vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these 
faults were now superadded the faults which are 
commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious 
and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe 30 
distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the 
I beggar were blended with those of the author, la)The 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 39 

prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were 
scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good for- 
tune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost 
certain to be abused. After months of starvation and 

5 despair, a full third night or a well-received dedica- 
tion filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed 
poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those lux- 
uries with the images of which his mind had been 
haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and 

lo eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. 
A week of taverns soon qualified him for another 
year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, 
of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blaz- 
ing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes 

15 lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or 
wearing paper cravats because their linen was in 
pawn ; sometimes drinking Champagne and Tokay 
with Betty Careless ; sometimes standing at the 
window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff 

20 up the scent of what they could not afford to taste: 
they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never 
knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. 
They looked on a regular and frugal life with the 
same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter 

25 feels for a stationary abode and for the restraints and 
securities of civilized communities. They were as un- 
tameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, 
as the wild ass. They could no more be broken in to 
the offices of social man than the unicorn could be 

30 trained to serve and abide by the crib. It was well 
if they did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear 
the hands which ministered to their necessities. To 



40 3/ACAULAY ON 

assist thein was impossible; and tlie most benevolent 
of mankind at length became weary of giving relief 
which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as 
soon as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed 
on the wretched adventurer, such as, properly hus- 5 
banded, might have supplied him for six months, it 
was instantly spent in strange freaks of sensuality, 
and, before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet 
was again pestering all his accjuaintance for twopence 
to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook- 10 
shop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their 
houses, those houses were forthwith turned into 
bagnios and taverns. All order was destroyed; all 
business was suspended. The most good-natured 
host began to repent of his eagerness to serve a man 15 
of genius in distress when he heard his guest roaring 
for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning. 5?-- 
Cv A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope 
had been raised above poverty by the active patronage 
which, in his youth, both the great political parties 20 
had extended to his Homer. Young had received the 
only pension ever bestowed, to the best of our recol- 
lection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the reward of mere 
literary merit. One or two of the many poets who 
attached themselves to the opposition, Thomson in 25 
particular and Mallet, obtained, after much severe 
suffering, the means of subsistence from their political 
friends. Richardson, like a man of sense, kept his 
shop; and his shop kept him, which his novels, 
admirable as they are, would scarcely have done But 30 
nothing could be more deplorable than the state even 
of the ablest men, who at that time depended for sub- 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHN SON. 41 

sistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Field-' 
ing, and Thomson, were certainly four of the most 
distinguished persons that England produced during 
the eighteenth century. It is well known that they 

5 were all four arrested for debt. ^. 
(Jplnto calamities and difficulties such as these John- 
son plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that 
time till he was three or four and fifty, we have little 
information respecting him; little, we mean, com- 

lo pared with the full and accurate information which 
we possess respecting his proceedings and habits 
towards the close of his life. He emerged at length 
from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the 
society of the polished and the opulent. His fame 

15 was established. A pension sufficient for his wants 
had been conferred on him ; and he came forth to 
astonish a generation with which he had almost as little 
in common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards. 

In his early years he had occasionally seen the great ; 

20 but he had seen them as a beggar. He now came 
among them as a companion. The demand for amuse- 
ment and instruction had, during the course of twenty 
years, been gradually increasing. The price of 
literary labor had risen ; and those rising men of letters 

25 with whom Johnson was henceforth to associate were 
for the most part persons widely different from those 
who had walked about with him all night in the streets 
for want of a lodging. Burke, Robertson, the War- 
tons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, 

30 Sir William Jones, Goldsmith, and Churchill, were 
the most distinguished writers of what may be called 
the second generation of the Johnsonian age. Of 



42 MAC A [/LA V ON 

t^ these men Churchill was the only one in whom we can 
trace the stronger lineaments of that character which, 
when Johnson first came up to London, was common 
among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had felt 
the pressure of severe poverty. Almost all had been 5 
early admitted into the most respectable society on 
an equal footing. They were men of quite a differ- 
ent species from the dependents of Curll and Osborne. 
Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of 
a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race of 10 
Grub Street hacks ; the last of that generation of 
authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute man- 
ners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the satirical 
genius of Pope, From nature he had received an 
uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irri- 15 
table temper. The manner in which the earlier years 
of his manhood had passed had given to his de- 
meanor, and even to his moral character, some pecu- 
liarities appalling to the civilized beings who were the 
companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity 20 
of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of 
strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of 
sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally 
strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted 
with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity 25 
of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion 
of those with whom he lived during the last twenty 
years of his life, a complete original. An original he 
was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we pos- 
sessed full information concerning those who shared 30 
his early hardships, we should probably find that what 
we call his singularities of manner were, for the most 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 43 

part, failings which he had in common with the class 
to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham Park as 
he had used to eat behind the screen at St. John's 
Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged 

5 clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should 
eat, who, during a great part of his life, had passed 
the morning in doubt whether he should have food for 
the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accus- 
tomed him to bear privation with fortitude, but not 

loto taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast; 
but when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a 
famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his fore- 
head, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. 
He scarcely ever took wine ; but when he drank it 

15 he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These 
were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral 
disease which raged with such deadly malignity in 
his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and 
violence which he showed in society were to be 

20 expected from a man whose temper, not naturally 
gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, 
by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the 
importunity of creditors, by the insolence of book- 
sellers, by the derision of fools, by the insincerity of 

25 patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all 
food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of 
all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart 
sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, 
ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to emi- 

30 nence and command. It was natural that, in the 
exercise of his power, he should be "eo immitior, 
quia toleraverat," that, though his heart was un- , 



44 MACAULAY ON 

doubtedly generous and humane, his demeanor in 
society should be harsh and despotic. For severe 
distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, 
but munificent relief. But for the suffering which a 
harsh word inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no 5 
pity ; for it was a kind of suffering which he could 
scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his 
shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. 
He turned his house into a place of refuge for a 
crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no 10 
other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and 
ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs 
of wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he 
scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs 
of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much 15 
of sharp misery, that he was not affected by paltry 
vexations; and he seemed to think that every body 
ought to be as much hardened to those vexations as 
himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining 
of a headache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about 20 
the dust on the road or the smell of the kitchen. 
These were, in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," 
which people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world 
so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because 
the Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him with 25 
no pity. Though his own health was not good, he 
detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary 
losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to 
beggary, moved him very little. People whose henrts 
had been softened by prosperity might weep, he said, 30 
for such events; but all that could be expected of a 
plain man was not to laugh. He was not much 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 45 

.■^\ 

"^oved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying 

of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such 

grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle 

and the wealthy. A washerwoman, left a widow with 

5 nine small children, would not have sobbed herself to 
death. 

A person who troubled himself so little^bout small 
or sentimental grievances was not likely to be very < 
attentive to the feelings of others in the ordinary in-j 

lotercourse of society. He could not understand how 
a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any man really 
unhappy. "My dear doctor," said he to Goldsmith, 
"what harm does it do to a man to call him Holo- 
fernes?" "Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. 

15 Carter, "who is the worse for being talked of un- 
charitably?" Politeness has been w^ell defined as 
benevolence in small things. Johnson was impolite, 
not because he wanted benevolence, but because small 
things appeared smaller to him than to people who 

20 had never known what it was to live for fourpence 
halfpenny a day. 

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was 
the union of great powers with low prejudices. If we 
judge of him by the best parts of his mind, we should 

25 place him almost as high as he was placed by the 
idolatry of Boswell; if by the worst parts of his mind, 
we should place him even below Boswell himself. 
Where he was not under the influence of some strange 
scruple or some domineering passion, which prevented 

30 him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, 
he was a wary and acute reasoner, a little too much 
inclined to scepticism, and a little too fond of paradox.. -^ 



4^ MA CA ULA Y ON 

No man was less likely to be imposed upon by falla- 
cies in argument or by exaggerated statements of 
fact. But if, while he was beating down sophisms 
and exposing false testimony, some childish preju- 
dices, such as would excite laughter in a well managed 5 
nursery, came across him, he was smitten as if by 
enchantment. His mind dwindled away under the 
spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness. 
Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude 
and its force were now as much astonished at its 10 
strange narrowness and feebleness as the fisherman in 
the Arabian tale, when he saw the Genie, whose 
stature had overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and 
whose might seemed equal to a contest with armies, 
contract himself to the dimensions of his small 15 
prison, and lie there the helpless slave of the charm 
of Solomon. 

Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme 
severity the evidence for all stories which were merely 
odd. But when they were not only odd but miracu-20 
lous, his severity relaxed. He began to be credulous 
precisely at the point where the most credulous 
people begin to be sceptical. It is curious to observe, 
both in his writings and in his conversation, the con- 
trast between the disdainful manner in which he 25 
rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, even when they 
are consistent with the general laws of nature, and 
the respectful manner in which he mentions the wildest 
stories relating to the invisible world. A man who 
told him of a water-spout or a meteoric stone gener- 30 
ally had the lie direct given him for his pains. A 
man who told him of a prediction or a dream wonder- 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JO/LNSOiV. 47 

fully accomplished was sure of a courteous hearing. 
"Johnson," observed Hogarth, "like King David, 
says in his haste that all men are liars." "His in- 
credulity," says Mrs. Thrale, "amounted almost to 

5 disease." She tells us how he browbeat a gentleman 
who gave him an account of a hurricane in the West 
Indies, and a poor quaker who related some strange 
circumstance about the red-hot balls fired at the siege 
of Gibraltar. "It is not so; it cannot be true. Don't 

lo tell that story again. You cannot think how poor a 
figure you make in telling it." He once said, half 
jestingly, we suppose, that for six months he refused 
to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and 
that he still believed the extent of the calamity to be 

15 greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave 
face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's Gate saw a 
ghost, and how this ghost was something of a shadowy 
being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt to Cock 
Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for not follow- 

2oingup another scent of the same kind with proper 
spirit and perseverance. He rejects the Celtic gene- 
alogies and poems without the least hesitation; yet he 
declares himself willing to believe the stories of the 
second sight. If he had examined the claims of the 

25 Highland seers with half the severity with which he 
sifted the evidence for the genuineness of Fingal, he 
would, we suspect, have come away from Scotland 
with a mind fully made up. In his Lives of the 
Poets, we find that he is unwilling to give credit to 

30 the accounts of Lord Roscommon's early proficiency 
in his studies; but he tells with great solemnity an 
absurd romance about some intelligence preternatu- 



48 MA CA ULA V OAT 

rally impressed on the mind of that nobleman. He 
avows himself to be in great doubt about the truth of 
the story, and ends by warning his readers not wholly 
to slight such impressions. 

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are 5 
worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could 
discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all 
bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the 
scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a person who 
had really' obtained an insight into the divine phi- 10 
losophy of the New Testament, and who considered 
Christianity as a noble scheme of government, tend- 
ing to promote the happiness and to elevate the moral 
nature of man. The horror which the sectaries felt 
for cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge, mince-pies, 15 
and dancing bears excited his contempt. To the 
arguments urged by some very worthy people against 
showy dress he replied with admirable sense and 
spirit, "Let us not be found, when our Master calls 
us, stripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit 20 
of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas! sir, 
a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat will 
not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one." 
Yet he was himself under the tyranny of scruples as 
unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho, and 25 
carried his zeal for ceremonies and for ecclesiastical 
dignities to lengths altogether inconsistent with reason 
or with Christian charity. He has gravely noted 
down in his diary that he once committed the sin of 
drinking coffee on Good Friday. In Scotland he 30 
thought it his duty to pass several months without 
joining in public worship solely because the ministers 



BOSIVELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 49 

of the kirk had not been ordained l)y bishops. His 
mode of estimating the piety of his neighbors was 
somewhat singular. "Campbell," said he, "is agood 
man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in 

5 the inside of a church for many years; but he never 
passes a church without pulling off his hat: this 
shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily 
must surely contain many pious robbers and well- 
principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that 

lo a Roundhead who named all his children after Sol- 
omon's singers, and talked in the House of Commons 
about seeking the Lord, might be an unprincipled 
villain, whose religious mummeries only aggravated 
his guilt. But a man who took off his hat when 

15 he pnssed a church episcopally consecrated must be 
a good man, a pious man, a man of good principles. 
Johnson could easily see that those persons who 
looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful, 
deemed most ignobly of the attributes of God and of 

20 the ends of revelation. But with what a storm of 
invective he would have overwhelmed any man who 
had blamed him for celebrating the redemption of 
mankind with sugarless tea and butterless buns. 
(JjNobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant of / 

25 patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly the error of 
those who regarded liberty not as a means but as an 
end, and who proposed to themselves, as the object of 
their pursuit, the prosperity of the state as distinct 
from the prosperity of the individuals who compose 

30 the state. His calm and settled opinion seems to 
have been that forms of government have little or no 
influence on the happiness of society. This opinion, 



50 AfACAULAY OM 

erroneous as it is, ought at least to have preserved him 
from all intemperance on political questions. It did 
not, however, preserve him from the lowest, fiercest, 
and most absurd extravagances of party spirit, from 
rants which, in every thing but the diction, resembled 5 
those of Squire Western. He was, as a politician, 
half ice and half fire. On the side of his intellect he 
was a mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about 
public affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil 
tendency of any form of polity. His passions, on 10 
the contrary, were violent even to slaying against all 
who leaned to Whiggish principles. The well-known 
lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's Traveller 
express what seems to have been his deliberate 
judgment: 15 

" How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure ! " 

He had previously put expressions very similar into 
the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast 
these passages with the torrents of raving abuse which 20 
he poured forth against the Long Parliament and the 
American Congress. In one of the conversations 
reported by Boswell this inconsistency displays itself 
in the most ludicrous manner. 

"Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested 25 
that luxury corrupts a people and destroys the spirit 
of liberty. Johnson: Sir, that is all visionary. I 
would not give half a guinea to live under one form of 
government rather than another. It is of no moment 
to the happiness of an individual. Sir, the danger 30 
of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 5^ 

What Frenchman is prevented passing his life as he 
pleases?" Sir Ada.m: "But, sir, in the British con- 
stitution it is surely of importance to keep up a spirit 
in the people, so as to preserve a balance against the 

5 crown." Johnson: "Sir, I perceive you are a vile 
Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of 
the crown? The crown has not power enough." 

One of the old philosophers. Lord Bacon tells us, 
used to say that life and death were just the same to 

lohim. "Why then," said an objector, "do you not 
kill yourself?" The philosopher answered, "Because 
it is just the same." If the difference between two 
forms of government be not worth half a guinea, it is 
not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler than Tory- 

15 ism, or how the crown can have too little power. If 
the happiness of individuals is not affected by political 
abuses, zeal for liberty is doubtless ridiculous. But 
zeal for monarchy must be equally so. No person 
could have been more quick-sighted than Johnson 

20 to such a contradiction as this in the logic of an 
antagonist. 

The judgments which Johnson passed on books 
were, in his own time, regarded with superstitious 
veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated 

25 with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judg- 
ments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The 
mind of the critic was hedged round by an uninter- 
rupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. Within 
his narrow limits he displayed a vigor and an activity 

30 which ought to have enabled him to clear the barrier 
that confined him. 

How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his 



.# 



MACAULA Y ON 



piemises so ably should assume his premises so 
foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human 
nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in 
the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers 
show so much acuteness and force of mind in argu- 5 
ing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is 
perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds 
came by such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure 
of the tlieory which they are rearing escapes their 
vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious unsound- 10 
ness of the foundation. It is the same with some 
eminent lawyers. Their legnl arguments are intellec- 
tual prodigies, abounding with the hapjiiest analogies 
and the most refined distinctions. The principles of 
their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute- 15 
book and the reports being once assumed as the foun- 
dations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to 
lie perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises 
as to the postulates on which their whole system 
rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the funda- 20 
mental maxims of that system which they have passed 
their lives in studying, these very men often talk the 
languages of savages or of children. Those who have 
listened to a man of this class in his own court, and 
who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes 25 
and digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a 
crowd of precedents which at first sight seem contra- 
dictory, scarcely know him again when a few hours 
later, they hear him speaking on the other side of 
Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. They 30 
can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which are 
faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which 



BOSJVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 53 

do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can 
proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect 
which had excited their admiration under the same roof 
and on the same day. 

5 1*^ Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not 
like a legislator. He never examined foundations 
where a point was already ruled. His whole code of 
criticism rested on pure assumption, for which he 
sometimes quoted a precedent or an authority, but 

lo rarely troubled himself to give a reason drawn from 
the nature of things. He took it for granted that the 
kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which 
he had been accustomed to hear praised from his 
childhood, and which he had himself \yritten with 

15 success, was the best kind of poetry .U^n his bio- 
graphical work he has repeatedly laid it down as an 
undeniable proposition that during the latter part of 
the seventeenth century, and the earlier part of the 
eighteenth, English poetry had been in a constant 

2o progress of improvement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, 
and Pope had been, according to him, the great 
reformers. He judged of all works of the imagination 
by the standard established among his own contem- 
poraries. Though he allowed Homer to have been 

25 a greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought 
the .^neid a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed he 
well might have thought so; for he preferred Pope's 
Iliad to Homer's. He pronounced that, after Hoole's 
translation of Tasso, Fairfax's would hardly be 

30 reprinted. He could see no merit in our fine old 
English ballads, and always spoke with the most pro- 
voking conteniDt of Percy's fondness for them. Of 



54 MACAULAY ON 

the great original works of imagination which appeared 
during his time, Richardson's novels alone excited 
his admiration. He could see little or no merit in 
Tom Jones, in Gulliver's Travels, or in Tristram 
Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of Indolence he 5 
vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation, of 
commendation much colder than what he has bestowed 
on the Creation of that portentous bore. Sir Richard 
Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. 
Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he 10 
felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just; but 
it was, we suspect, just by chance. He despised the 
Fingal for the very reason which led many men of 
genius to admire it. He despised it, not because it 
was essentially commonplace, but because it had a 15 
superficial air of originality. 

He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of com- 
positions fashioned on his own principles. But Avhen 
a deeper philosophy was required, when he under- 
took to pronounce judgment on the works of those 20 
great minds which "yield homage only to eternal 
laws," his failure was ignominious. vc^e criticised 
Pope's Epitaphs excellently. But his observations 
on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's poems seem to 
us for the most part as wretched as if they had been 25 
written by Rymer himself, whom we,^take to have 
been the worst critic that ever lived. \^ 

Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects can 
be compared only to that strange nervous feeling 
which made him uneasy if he had not touched every 30 
post between the Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. 
His preference of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 55 

is an instance. An English epitaph, he said, would 
disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not 
pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an Eng- 
lish epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can 

5 be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which 
there was not for covering the Roman arches of tri- 
umph with Greek inscriptions, or for commemorating 
the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylae in Egyptian 
hieroglyphics, we are utterly unable to imagine. 

lo On men and manners, at least on the men and man- 
ners of a particular place and a particular age, John- 
son had certainly looked with a most observant and 
discriminating eye. His remarks on the education 
of children, on marriage, on the economy of families, 

15 on the rules of society, are always striking, and gener- 
ally sound. In his writings, indeed, the knowledge 
of life which he possessed in an eminent degree is 
very imperfectly exhibited. Like those unfortunate 
chiefs of the middle ages who were suffocated by their 

20 own chain-mail and cloth of gold, his maxims perish 
under that load of words which was designed for 
their defence and their ornament. But it is clear, 
from the remains of his conversation, that he had 
more of that homely wisdom which nothing but ex- 

25 perience and observation can give than any writer 
since the time of Swift. If he had been content to 
write as he talked, he might have left books on the 
practical art of living superior to the Directions to 
Servants. 

30 Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks 
on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable 
for narrowness as for strength. He was no master 



56 MAC AULA Y ON 

of the great science of human nature. vj.He had 
studied, not the genus man, but the species Lon- 
doner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant 
with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral 
and intellectual character which were to be seen from 5 
Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde-Park corner 
to Mile-end green. But his philosophy stopped at 
the first turnpike-gate. /.^f the rural life of England 
he knew nothing; and he took it for granted that 
every body who lived in the country was either stupid 10 
or miserable. "Country gentlemen," said he, "must 
be unhappy; for they have not enough to keep their 
lives in motion;" as if all those peculiar habits and 
associations which made Fleet Street and Charing 
Cross the finest views in the world to himself had 15 
been essential parts of human nature. /^Of remote 
countries and past times he talked with wild and 
ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age 
of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a 
people of brutes, a barbarous people." In conversa- 20 
tion with Sir Adam Ferguson he used similar lan- 
guage. "The boasted Athenians," he said, "were 
barbarians. The mass of every people must be bar- 
barous where there is no printing." The fact was 
this: he saw that a Londoner who could not read was 25 
a very stupid and brutal fellow; he saw that great 
refinement of taste and activity of intellect were rarely 
found in a Londoner who had not read much; and, 
because it was by means of books that people acquired 
almost all their knowledge in the society with which 30 
he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the 
strongest and clearest evidence, that the human mind P 



BOSIVELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 57 

vLcan be cultivated by means of books alone. An 
Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; 
and the largest library to which he had access might 
be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in 

5 Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every 
morning in conversation with Socrates, and might 
hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. 
He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes ; he 
walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings 

loof Zeuxis; he knew by heart the choruses of ^s- 
chylus ; he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the 
street reciting the shield of Achilles or the Death of 
Argus; he was a legislator, conversant with high 
questions of alliance, revenue, and war; he was a 

15 soldier, trained under a liberal and generous disci- 
pline; he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh 
the effect of opposite arguments. These things were 
in themselves an education, an education eminently 
fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, 

20 but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to 
the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to 
the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian 
who did not improve his mind by reading was, in 
Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney 

25 who made his mark, much such a person as black 
Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to 
a parish clerk or a printer's devil. 

Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried to 
a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for for- 

3oeigners. He pronounced the French to be a very silly 
people, much behind us, stupid, ignorant creatures. 
And this judgment he formed after having been at 



5» MACAULAY ON 

Paris about a month, during which he would not talk 
French, for fear of giving the natives an advantage 
over him in conversation. He pronounced them, 
also, to be an indelicate people, because a French 
footman touched the sugar with his fingers. That 5 
ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond, has 
defended his countrymen very successfully against 
Johnson's accusation, and has pointed out some 
English practices which, to an impartial spectator, 
would seem at least as inconsistent with physical 10 
cleanliness and social decorum as those which John- 
son so bitterly reprehended. To the sage, as Boswell 
loves to call him, it never occurred to doubt that there 
must be something eternally and immutably good in 
the usages to which he had been accustomed. In 15 
fact, Johnson's remarks on society beyond the bills 
of mortality are generally of much the same kind with 
those of honest Tom Dawson, the English footman in 
Dr. Moore's Zeluco. "Suppose the king of P>ance 
has no sons, but only a daughter, then, when the king 20 
dies, this here daughter, according to that there law, 
cannot be made queen, but the next near relative, 
provided he is a man, is made king, and not the last 
king's daughter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. 
The French foot-guards are dressed in blue, and all 25 
the marching regiments in white, which has a very 
foolish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regi- 
mentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the 
artillery." 

Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to 30 
a state of society completely new to him; and a salu- 
tary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on that 



BOS IV ELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 59 

-:-? . .... 

-Occasion to have crossed his mind for the first time. 
He confessed, in the last paragraph of his Journey, 
that his thoughts on national manners were the thoughts 
of one who had seen but little, of one who had passed 

5 his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, how- 
ever, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the 
last he entertained a fixed contempt for all those 
modes of life and those studies which tend to eman- 
cipate the mind from the prejudices of a particular 

loage or a particular nation. Of foreign travel and of 
history he spoke with the fierce and boisterous con- 
tempt of ignorance. "What does a man learn by 
travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling? 
What did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except 

15 that there was a snake in one of the Pyramids of 
Egypt?" History was, in his opinion, to use the fine 
expression of Lord Plunkett, an old almanac; histor- 
ians could, as he conceived, claim no higher dignity 
than that of almanac-makers; and his favorite histori- 

2oans were those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no 
higher dignity. He always spoke with contempt of 
Robertson. Hume he would not even read. He 
affronted one of his friends for talking to him about 
Catiline's conspiracy, and declared that he never 

25 desired to hear of the Punic war again as long as he 
lived. 

Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect 
our own interests, considered in itself, is no better 
worth knowing than another fact. The fact that there 

30 is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Hannibal 
crossed the Alps, are in themselves as unprofitable to 
US as the fact that there is a green blind in a particU' 



6o A/ A CA ULA Y ON 

lar house in Threadneedle Street, or tlie fact that a 
Mr. Smith comes into the city every morning on the 
top of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is certain 
that tliose who will not crack the shell of history will 
never get at the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arro- 5 
gance, pronounced the kernel worthless, because he 
saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling 
to distant countries and of studying the annals of past 
times is to preserve men from the contraction of mind 
which those can hardly escape whose whole communion 10 
is with one generation and one neighborhood, who 
arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not 
sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly 
confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with 
essential properties. In short, the real use of travel- 15 
ling and of studying history is to keep men from being 
what Tom Dawsoji was in fiction and Samuel John- 
son in reality. \L^ 

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears 
far greater in Bosvvell's books than in his own. His 20 
conversation appears to have been quite equal to his 
writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner.- 
When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in 
forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took 
his pen in his hand to write for the public, his style 25 
became systematically vicious. All his books are 
written in a learned language, in a language which 
nobody hears from his mother or his nurse, in a lan- 
guage in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bar- 
gains, or makes love, in a language in which nobody 30 
ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson himself did not 
think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expres- 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 6 1 

sions which came first to his tongue were simple, 
energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for pub- 
lication, he did his sentences out of English into 
Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. 

5 Thrale are the original of that work of wliich tlie 
Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is 
amusing to compare the two versions. "When we 
were taken upstairs," says he in one of his letters, "a 
dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of 

lous was to lie." This incident is recorded in the 
Journey as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which 
we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a man 
black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes 
Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he 

15 said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it 
sweet;" then, after a pause, "it has not vitality 
enough to preserve it from putrefaction." 

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even 
agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. 

20 Few readers, for example, would be willing to part 
with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a 
mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, 
which has been adopted on principle, and which can 
be sustained only by constant effort, is always offen- 

25 sive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. 

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar 
to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, 
that it is almost superfluous to point them out. It is 
well known that he made less use than any other emi- 

3onent writer of those strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon 
or Norman- French, of which the roots lie in the 
inmost depths of our language; and that he felt a 



62 MACAU LA Y ON 

vicious partiality for terms which long after our own 
speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek 
and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully- 
naturalized, must be considered as born aliens, not 
entitled to rank with the king's English. His con- 5 
stant practice of padding out a sentence with useless 
epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an 
exquisite, his antithetical forms of expression, con- 
stantly employed even where there is no opposition in 
the ideas expressed, his big words wasted on little 10 
things, his harsh inversions, so widely different from 
those graceful and easy inversions which give variety, 
spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old 
writers, all these peculiarities have been imitated by 
his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till the 15 
public has become sick of the subject. 

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, 
"If you were to write a fable about little fishes, 
doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like 
whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for 20 
personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the 
character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty 
town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, 
he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. 
His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic elo- 25 
quence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Eu- 
phelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, 
or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia 
describes her reception at the country-house of her 
relations in such terms as these: "I was surprised, 30 
after the civilities of my first reception, to find, instead 
of the leisure and tranquillity which a rural life always 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. (>2, 

promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, 
a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry 
of diligence, by which every face was clouded and 
every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla 

5 informs us that she "had not passed the earlier part 
of life without the flattery of courtship and the joys 
of triumph ; but had danced the round of gaiety 
amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations of 
applause, had been attended from pleasure to pleasure 

ioby the great, the sprightly, and the vain, and had seen 
her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gal- 
lantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." 
Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his 
petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well 

15 cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not 
when a 'oman has a great peard: I spy a great peard 
under her muffler." ' 

We had something more to say. But our article is 
already too long ; and we must close it. We would 

20 fain part in good humor from the hero, from the bio- 
grapher, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has 
performed his task, has at least this claim to our grati- 
tude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book 
again. As we close it the club-room is before us, and 

25 the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and 
the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those 
heads which live forever on the canvass of Reynolds. 
There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin 
form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and 

30 ' It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close 
resemblance to a passage in the ' ' Rambler " (No. 20). The 
resemblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. 



^4 BOS WELL'S LLFE OF JOLiNSOM. 

the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his 
snuff-box and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. 
In the foreground is that strange figure which is as 
familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we 
have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge 5 
massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the 
brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey 
wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the 
nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the 
eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; 10 
we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it pufifing; 
and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What 
then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't 
see your way through the question, sir!" 

What a singular destiny has been that of this 15 
remarkable man ! To be regarded in his own age as 
a classic, and in ours as a comjxanion! To receive 
from his contemporaries that full homage which men 
of genius have in general received only from posterity! 
To be more intimately known to posterity than other 20 
men are known to their contemporaries! That kind 
of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in 
his case, the most durable. The reputation of those 
writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, 
is every day fading; while those peculiarities of 25 
manner and that careless table-talk, the memory of 
which he probably thought would die with him, are 
likely to be remembered as long as the English lan- 
guage is spoken in any quarter of the globe. 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.* 

-^sop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has 
been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I 
do raise! Yet which of us, in his way, has not some- 
times been guilty of the like? Nay, so foolish are 

5 men, they often, standing at ease and as spectators on 
the highway, will volunteer to exclaim of the Fly (not 
being tempted to it, as he was) exactly to the same 
purport: What a dust thou dost raise! Smallest of 
mortals, when mounted aloft by circumstances, come 

lo to seem great; smallest of phenomena connected with 
them are treated as important, and must be sedulously 
scanned, and commented upon with loud emphasis. 

That Mr. Croker should undertake to edit BoswelPs 
Life of Johnson was a praiseworthy but no miraculous 

15 procedure: neither could the accomplishment of such 
undertaking be, in an epoch like ours, anywise regarded 
as an event in Universal History; the right or the 
wrong accomplishment thereof was, in very truth, one 
of the most insignificant of things. However, it sat 

20 in a great environment, on the axle of a high, fast- 
rolling, parliamentary chariot; and all the world has 
exclaimed over it, and the author of it : What a dust 

* The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: inchiding a Tour to 
the Hebrides: By James Boswell, Esq. — A new Edition, with 
25 numerous Additions and Notes : by John Wilson Croker, LL.D., 
F.R.S. 5 vols. London, 1831. 

65 



66 CARLYLE ON 

thou dost raise! List to the Reviews, and "Organs of 
Public Opinion," from the National Oinuibus upwards: 
criticisms, vituperative and laudatory, stream from 
their thousand throats of brass and of leather; here 
chanting lo Fceaiis ; there grating harsh thunder or 5 
vehement shrew-mouse squeaklets; till the general ear 
is filled, and nigh deafened. Boswell's Book had a 
noiseless birth, compared with this Edition of Bos- 
well's Book. On the other hand, consider with what 
degree of tumult Paradise Lost and the Iliad were 10 
ushered in! 

To swell such clamor, or prolong it beyond the time, 
seems nowise our vocation here. At most, perhaps, 
we are bound to inform simple readers, with all pos- 
sible brevity, what manner of performance and Edition 15 
this is; especially, whether, in our poor judgment, it 
is worth laying out three pounds sterling upon, yea or 
not. The whole business belongs distinctly to the 
lower ranks of the trivial class. 

Let us admit, then, with great readiness, that as 20 
Johnson once said, and the Editor repeats, "all works 
which describe manners require notes in sixty or 
seventy years, or less;" that, accordingly, a new Edi- 
tion of Boswell was desirable; and that Mr. Croker 
has given one. For this task he had various quali- 25 
fications: his own voluntary resolution to do it; his 
high place in society, unlocking all manner of archives 
to him ; not less, perhaps, a certain anecdotico-bio- 
graphic turn of mind, natural or acquired; we mean 
a love for the iiiinuter events of History, and talent 30 
for investigating these. Let us admit, too, that he 
has been very diligent; seems to have made inquiries 



BOSIVELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 67 

perseveringly, far and near; as well as drawn freely 
from his own ample stores ; and so tells us, to appear- 
ance quite accurately, much that he has not found 
lying on the highways, but has had to seek and dig 

5 for. Numerous persons, chiefly of quality, rise to 
view in these Notes ; when and also where they came 
into this world, received office or promotion, died 
and were buried (only what they did, except digest, 
remaining often too mysterious), — is faithfully enough 

10 set down. Whereby all that their various and doubt- 
less widely-scattered Tombstones could have taught 
us, is here presented, at once in a bound Book. Thus 
is an indubitable conquest, though a small one, gained 
over our great enemy, the all-destroyer Time, and as 

15 such shall have welcome. 

Nay, let us say that the spirit of Diligence, exhib- 
ited in this department, seems to attend the Editor 
honestly throughout; he keeps every where a watchful 
outlook on his Text; reconciling the distant with the 

20 present, or at least indicating and regretting their 
irreconcilability; elucidating, smoothing down; in all 
ways exercising, according to ability, a strict edi- 
torial superintendence. Any little Latin or even 
Greek phrase is rendered into English, in general with 

25 perfect accuracy ; citations are verified, or else cor- 
rected. On all hands, moreover, there is a certain 
spirit of Decency maintained and insisted on : if not 
good morals, yet good manners are rigidly incul- 
cated; if not Religion, and a devout Christian heart, 

30 yet Orthodoxy, and a cleanly Shovel-hatted look, — 
which, as compared with flat Nothing, is something 
very considerable. Grant, too, as no contemptible 



68 CARLYLE ON 

triumph of this hitter spirit, that though the Editor is 
known as a decided Politician and Party-man, he has 
carefully subdued all temptations to trangress in that 
way: except by quite involuntary indications, and 
rather as it were the pervading temper of the whole, 5 
you could not discover on which side of the Political 
Warfare he is enlisted and fights. This, as we said, 
is a great triumi)h of the Decency-principle: for this, 
and for these other graces and performances, let the 
Editor have all praise. 10 

Herewith, however, must the praise unfortunately 
terminate. Diligence, Fidelity, Decency, are good 
and indispensable: yet, without Faculty, without 
Light, they will not do the work. Along with that 
Tombstone-information, perhaps even without much 15 
of it, we could have liked to gain some answer, in one 
way or other, to this wide question : What and how 
was English Life in Johnson's time; wherein has ours 
grown to differ therefrom? In other words: What 
things have we to forget, what to fancy and remem- 20 
ber, before we, from such distance, can put ourselves 
in Johnson's /Af^f^y and so, in the full sense of the 
term, imderstand him, his sayings and his doings? 
This was indeed specially the problem which a Com- 
mentator and Editor had to solve: a complete solu-25 
tion of it should have lain in him, his whole mind 
should have been filled and prepared with perfect 
insight into it; then, whether in the way of express 
Dissertation, of incidental Exposition and Indication, 
opportunities enough would have occurred of bring- 30 
ing out the same: what was dark in the figure of the 
Past had thereby been enlightened ; Boswell had, not 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 69 

in show and word only, but in very fact been made 
new again, readable to us who are divided from liim, 
even as he was to those close at hand. Of all which 
very little has been attempted here; accomplished, 

5 we should say, next to nothing, or altogether nothing. 
Excuse, no doubt, is in readiness for such omis- 
sion; and, indeed, for innumerable other failings; — 
as where, for example, the Editor will punctually ex- 
plain what is already sun-clear; and then anon, not 

10 without frankness, declare frequently enough that 
"the Editor does not understand," that "the Editor 
cannot guess," — while, for most part, the Reader 
cannot help both guessing and seeing. Thus, if John- 
.son say, in one sentence, that "English names should 

15 not be used in Latin verses;" and then, in the next 
sentence, speak blamingly of "Carteret being used as 
a dactyl," will the generality of mortals detect any 
puzzle there? Or again, where poor Boswell writes, 
"I always remember a remark made to me by a 

20 Turkish lady, educated in France: 'Alafoi, monsieur, 
notre bonheur depend de la fagon que notre sang cir- 
cule j' " — though the Turkish lady here speaks Eng- 
lish-French, where is the call for a Note like this: 
"Mr. Boswell no doubt fancied these words had some 

25 meaning, or he would hardly have quoted them; but 
what that meaning is the Editor cannot guess" ? The 
Editor is clearly no witch at a riddle. — For these and 
all kindred deficiencies the excuse, as we said, is at 
hand ; but the fact of their existence is not the less 

30 certain and regrettable. 

Indeed, it, from a very early stage of the business, 
becomes afifiictively apparent, how much the Editor, 



^o CARLYLE ON 

SO well furnished with all external appliances and 
means, is from within unfurnished with means for 
forming to himself any just notion of Johnson or of 
Johnson's Life; and therefore of speaking on that 
subject with much hojDe of edifying. Too lightly is it 5 
from the first taken for granted that Hunger, the 
great basis of our life, is also its apex and ultimate 
perfection; that as "Neediness and Greediness and 
Vainglory" are the chief qualities of most men, so no 
man, not even a Johnson, acts or can think of acting 10 
on any other principle. Whatsoever, therefore, can- 
not be referred to the two former categories (Need 
and Greed), is without scruple ranged under the latter. 
It is here properly that our Editor becomes burden- 
some, and, to the weaker sort, even a nuisance. 15 
"What good is it," will such cry, "when we had still 
some faint shadow of belief that man was better than 
a selfish Digesting-machine, what good is it to poke 
in, at every turn, and explain how this and that, 
which we thought noble in old Samuel, was vulgar, 20 
base; that for him, too, there was no reality but in 
the Stomach ; and except Pudding, and the finer 
species of pudding which is named Praise, life had no 
pabulum? Why, for instance, when we know that 
Johnson loved his good Wife, and says expressly that 25 
their marriage was 'a love-match on both sides,' — 
should two closed lips open to tell us only this: 'Is 
it not possible that the obvious advantage of having a 
woman of experience to superintend an establishment 
of this kind (the Edial school) may have contributed 30 
to a match so disproportionate in point of age? — 
3Ed. ?' Or agaii) when, in the Text, the honest cynic 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 71 

speaks freely of his former poverty, and it is known 
that he once lived on fourpence halfpenny a-day, — 
need a Commentator advance, and comment thus: 
'When we find Dr. Johnson tell unpleasant truths to, 

5 or of, other men, let us recollect that he does not 
appear to have spared himself, on occasions in which 
he might be forgiven for doing so?' Why, in short," 
continues the exasperated Reader, "should Notes of 
this species stand affronting me, when there might 

10 have been no Note at all?" — Gentle Reader, we 
answer, Be not wroth. What other could an honest 
Commentator do, than give thee the best he had? 
Such was the picture and theorem he had fashioned 
for himself of the world and of man's doings therein: 

15 take it, and draw wise inferences from it. If there 
did exist a Leader of Public Opinion, and Champion 
of Orthodoxy in the Church of Jesus of Nazareth, 
who reckoned that man's glory consisted in not being 
poor; and that a Sage, and Prophet of his time, must 

20 needs blush because the world had paid him at that 
easy rate of fourpence halfpenny per diem, — was not 
the fact of such existence worth knowing, worth con- 
sidering? 

Of a much milder hue, yet to us practically of an 

25 all-defacing, and for the present enterprise quite 
ruinous character, — is another grand fundamental 
failing; the last we shall feel ourselves obliged to take 
the pain of specifying here. It is, that our Editor 
has fatally, and almost surprisingly, mistaken the 

30 limits of an Editor's function; and so, instead of 
working on the margin with his Pen, to elucidate as 
best might be, strikes boldly into the body of the 



72 CARLYLE ON 

page witli his Scissors, and there clips at discretion! 
Four Books Mr. C. had by him, wherefrom to gather 
light for the fifth, which was Boswell's. What does 
he do but now, in the placidest manner, — slit the 
whole five into slips, and sew these together into a 5 
sextum quid, exactly at his own convenience, giving 
Boswell the credit of the whole ! By what art-magic, 
our readers ask, has he united them? By the simplest 
of all: by Brackets. Never before was the full virtue 
of the Bracket made manifest. You begin a sentence 10 
under Boswell's guidance, thinking to be carried 
happily through it by the same: but no; in the 
middle, perhaps after your semicolon, and some con- 
sequent "for," — starts up one of these Bracket-liga- 
tures, and stitches you in from half a page to twenty 15 
or thirty pages of a Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi; 
so that often one must make the old sad reflection, 
"where we are, we know; whither we are going, no 
man knovveth!" It is truly said also, "There is 
much between the cup and the lip;" but here the 20 
case is still sadder: for not till after consideration 
can you ascertain, now when the cup is at the lip, 
what liquor is it you are imbibing; whether Boswell's 
French wine which you began with, or some of 
Piozzi's ginger-beer, or Hawkins's entire, or perhaps 25 
some other great Brewer's penny-swipes or even ale- 
gar, which has been surrei^titiously substituted in- 
stead thereof. A situation almost original ; not to 
be tried a second time! But, in fine, what ideas Mr. 
Croker entertains of a literary whole and the thing 30 
called Book, and how the very Printer's Devils 
did not rise in mutiny against such a congloniera- 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSOM. 73 

tion as this, and refuse to print it, — may remain a 
problem. 

But now happily our say is said. All faults, the 
Moralists tell us, are properly shortcoiiiings ; crimes 

5 themselves are nothing other than a not doing enough j 
^. fightings but with defective vigor. How much more 
a mere insufficiency, and this after good efforts, in 
handicraft practice! Mr. Croker says: "The worst 
that can happen is that all the present Editor has 

lo contributed may, if the reader so pleases, be rejected 
as surplusage.'" It is our pleasant duty to take with 
hearty welcome what he has given ; and render thanks 
even for what he meant to give. Next, and finally, 
it is our painful duty to declare, aloud if that be 

15 necessary, that his gift, as weighed against the hard 
money which the Booksellers demand for giving it 
you, is (in our judgment) very greatly the lighter. 
No portion, accordingly, of our small floating capital 
has been embarked in the business, or shall ever be; 

20 indeed, were we in the market for such a thing, there 
is simply no Edition of Boswell to which this last would 
seem preferable. And now enough, and more than 
enough ! 

25 ^Q have next a word to say of James Boswell. 
Boswell has already been much commented upon; 
but rather in the way of censure and vituperation, than 
of true recognition. He was a man that brought 
himself much before the world; confessed that he 

30 eagerly coveted fame, or if that were not possible, 
notoriety ; of which latter as he gained far more than 
seemed his due, the public were incited, not only by 



74 CARLVLF. ON 

their natural love of scandal, but by a special ground 
of envy, to say whatever ill of him could be said. 
Out of the fifteen millions that then lived, and had 
bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has 
provided us a greater pleasure than any other indi- 5 
vidual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves; per- 
haps has done us a greater service than can be specially 
attributed to more than two or three: yet, ungrateful 
that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James 
iBoswell any where exists; his recompense in solid 10 
[pudding (so far as copyright went) was not excessive; 
land as for the empty praise, it has altogether been 
denied him. Men are unwiser than children; they do 
not know the hand that feeds them. 

' Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities 15 
lay open to the general eye ; visible, palpable to the 
dullest. His good qualities, again, belonged not to 
the Time he lived in ; were far from common then ; 
indeed, in such a degree, were almost unexampled ; 
not recognizable therefore by every one ; nay, apt 20 
even (so strange had they grown) to be confounded 
with the very vices they lay contiguous to and had 
sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and gross 
liver; gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him 
a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic char- 25 
acter, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, 
heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, 
alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too 
with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he 
gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had 30 
made a new man of him ; that he appeared at the 
Shakspeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "CoR- 



BOSIVF.LL'S J.IFE OF JOHNSON. 75 

siCA BoswELL," round his hat; and in short, if you 
will, lived no day of his life without doing and say- 
ing more than one pretentious ineptitude : all this 
unhappily is evident as the sun at noon. The very 

5 look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In 
that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his 
weaker fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell 
of coming pleasure, and scent it from afar; in those 
bag-cheeks, hanging like half-filled wine-skins, still 

loable to contain more; in that coarsely protruded 
shelf-mouth, that fat dewlapped chin: in all this, who 
sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility 
enough ; much that could not have been ornamental 
in the temper of a great man's overfed great man 

15 (what the Scotch name flunky), though it had been 

more natural there? The under part of Boswell's 

face is of a low, almost brutish character. - 

(^Unfortunately, on the other hand, what great and 

genuine good lay in him was nowise so self-evident. 

20 That Boswell was a hunter after spiritual Notabilities, 
that he loved such, and longed, and even crept and 
crawled to be near them; that he first (in old Touch- 
wood Auchinleck's phraseology) "took on with 
Paoli;" and then being off with "the Corsican land- 

25louper," took on with a schoolmaster, "ane that 
keeped a schule, and ca'd it an academy:" that he 
did all this, and could not help doing it, we account 
a very singular merit. The man, once for all, had 
an "open sense," an open loving heart, which so few 

30 have: where Excellence existed, he was compelled to 
acknowledge it; was drawn towards it, and (let the 
old sulphur-brand of a Laird say what he liked) could 



76 CARLYLE ON 

not but walk with it, — if not as superior, if not as 
equal, then as inferior and lackey, better so than not 
at all. If we reflect now that this love of Excellence 
had not only such an evil nature to triumph over; but 
also what an education and social position withstood it 5 
and weighed it down, its innate strength, victorious 
over all these things, may astonish us. Consider 
what an inward impulse there must have been, how 
many mountains of impediment hurled aside, before 
the Scottish Laird could, as humble servant, embrace la 
the knees (the bosom was not permitted him) of the 
English Dominie! "Your Scottish Laird," says an 
English naturalist of these days, "may be defined as 
the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known." 
Boswell too was a Tory; of quite peculiarly feudal, 15 
genealogical, pragmatical temper ; had been nurtured 
in an atmosphere of Heraldry, at the feet of a very 
Gamaliel in that kind ; within bare walls, adorned 
only with pedigrees, amid serving-men in threadbare 
livery ; all things teaching him, from birth upwards, 20 
to remember that a Laird was a Laird. Perhaps there 
was a special vanity in his very blood : old Auchinleck 
had, if not the gay, tail-spreading, peacock vanity of 
his son, no little of the slow-stalking, contentious, 
hissing vanity of the gander; a still more fatal species. 25 
Scottish Advocates will yet tell you how the ancient 
man, having chanced to be the first sheriff appointed 
(after the abolition of "hereditary jurisdictions") by 
royal authority, was wont, in dull pompous tone, to 
preface many a deliverance from the bench with thes^ 30 
words: "I, the first King's Sheriff in Scotland." • 'y 
o*=^And now behold the worthy Bozzy, so prepossessed 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOLINSON. 77 

and held back by nature and by art, fly nevertheless 
like iron to its magnet, whither his better genius, 
called I You may surround the iron and the magnet 
with what enclosures and encumbrances you please, — 

5 with wood, with rubbish, with brass: it matters not, 
the two feel each other, they struggle restlessly towards 
each other, they will be together. The iron may 
be a Scottish squirelet, full of gulosity and "gig- 
manity; ','* the magnet an English plebeian, and 

lo moving rag-and-dust mountain, coarse, proud, iras- 
cible, imperious: nevertheless, behold how they 
embrace, and inseparably cleave to one another! It 
is one of the strangest phenomena of the past century, 
that at a time when the old reverent feeling of disci- 

ispleship (such as brought men from far countries, with 
rich gifts, and prostrate soul, to the feet of the 
Prophets) had passed utterly away from men's practi- 
cal experience, and was no longer surmised to exist 
(as it does), perennial, indestructible, in man's inmost 

20 heart, — James Boswell should have been the indi- 
vidual, of all others, predestined to recall it, in such 
singular guise, to the wondering, and for a long whik^^ 
laughing and unrecognizing world. (i^/ 

- ','It has been commonly said. The man's vulgar vanity/ 

25 was all that attached him to Johnson; he delighted to be 
seen near him, to be thought connected with him. Now 
let it be at once granted that no consideration spring- 
ing out of vulgar vanity could well be absent from the 

* " (2- What do you mean by ' respectable?' — A. He always 
30 kept a gig." {Thttrtell's Trial.) — "Thus," it has been said, 
" does society naturally divide itself into four classes : Noblemen, 
Gentlemen, Gigmen, and Men." 



78 CARLYLE ON- 

mind of James Boswell, in this his intercourse with 
Johnson, or in any considerable transaction of his life. 
At the same time, ask yourself: Whether such vanity, 
and nothing else, actuated him therein; whether this 
was the true essence and moving principle of the phe- 5 
nomenon, or not rather its outward vesture, and the 
accidental environment (and defacement) in which it 
came to light? The man was, by nature and habit, 
vain; a sycophant-coxcomb, be it granted: but had 
there been nothing more than vanity in him, was 10 
Samuel Johnson the man of men to whom he must 
attach himself? At the date when Johnson was a 
poor rusty-coated "scholar," dwelling in Temple-lane, 
and indeed throughout their whole intercourse after- 
wards, were there not chancellors and prime ministers 15 
enough; graceful gentlemen, the glass of fashion; 
honor-giving noblemen; dinner-giving rich men; 
renowned fire-eaters, swordsmen, gownsmen ; Quacks 
and Realities of all hues, — any one of whom bulked 
much larger in the world's eye than Johnson ever did? 20 
To any one of whom, by half that submissiveness 
and assiduity, our Bozzy might have recommended 
himself; and sat there, the envy of surrounding lick- 
spittles; pocketing now solid emolument, swallowing 
now well-cooked viands and wines of rich vintage; 25 
in each case, also, shone on by some glittering reflex 
of Renown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed of 
innumerable observers. To no one of whom, how- 
ever, though otherwise a most diligent solicitor and 
purveyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar cour-30 
tierships were his paid drudgery, or leisure-amuse- 
ment; the worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 79 

voluntary business. Does not the frothy-hearted 
yet enthusiastic man, doffing his Advocate's-wig, 
regularly take post, and hurry up to London, for the 
sake of his Sage chiefly ; as to a Feast of Tabernacles, 

5 the Sabbath of his whole year? The plate-licker and 
wine-bibber dives into Bolt Court, to sip muddy 
coffee with a cynical old man and a sour-tempered 
blind old woman (feeling the cups, whether they are 
full, with her finger) ; and patiently endures contra- 

lo dictions without end; too happy so he may but be 
allowed to listen and live. Nay, it does not appear 
that vulgar vanity could ever have been much flattered 
by Boswell's relation to Johnson. Mr. Croker says, 
Johnson was, to the last, little regarded by the great 

15 world; from wliich, for a vulgar vanity, all honor, as 
from its fountain, descends. Bozzy, even among 
Johnson's friends and special admirers, seems rather 
to have been laughed at than envied: his officious, 
whisking, consequential ways, the daily reproofs and 

20 rebuffs he underwent, could gain from the world no 
golden, but only leaden, opinions. His devout Dis- 
cipleship seemed nothing more than a mean Spaniel- 
ship, in the general eye. His mighty "constellation," 
or sun, round whom he, as satellite, observantly 

25 gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but a huge ill- 
snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak night-moth, cir- 
cling foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing 
what he wanted. If he enjoyed Highland dinners and 
toasts, as henchman to a new sort of chieftain, Henry 

3oErskine, in the domestic "Outer-House," could hand 
him a shilling "for the sight of his Bear." Doubtless 
the man was laughed at, and often heard himself 



8o CARLYLE ON 

laughed at for his Johnsonism. To be envied is the 
grand and sole aim of vulgar vanity; to be filled with 
good things is that of sensuality: for Johnson perhaps 
no man living envied ^oox Bozzy ; and of good things 
(except himself paid for them) there was no vestige 5 
in that acquaintanceship. Had nothing other or better 
than vanity and sensuality been there, Johnson and 
Boswell had never come together, or had soon and 
finally separated again. • * 

In fact, the so copious terrestrial Dross that welters 10 
chaotically, as the outer sphere of this man's char- 
acter, does but render for us more remarkable, more 
touching, the celestial spark of goodness, of light, and 
Reverence for Wisdom which dwelt in the interior, 
and could struggle through such encumbrances, and 15 
in some degree illuminate and beautify them. There 
is much lying yet undeveloped in the love of Boswell 
for Johnson. A cheering proof, in a time which else 
utterly wanted and still wants such, that living Wis- 
dom is quite infinitely precious to man, is the symbol 20 
of the Godlike to him, which even weak eyes may dis- 
cern ; that Loyalty, Discipleship, all that was ever 
meant by Hero-worships lives perennially in the human 
bosom, and waits, even in these dead days, only for 
occasions to unfold it, and inspire all men with it, and 25 
again make the world alive! ■ James Boswell we can 
regard as a practical witness (or real martyr') to this 
high everlasting truth. A wonderful martyr, if you 
will; and in time which made such martyrdom doubly 
wonderful: yet the time and its martyr perhaps suited 30 
each other. For a decrepit, death-sick Era, when 
Cant had first decisively opened her poison-breathing 



BOSWELUS LIFE OF JOHNSOA''. 8i 

lips to proclaim that God-worship and Mammon-wor- 
ship were one and the same, that Life was a Lie, and 
the Earth Beelzebub's, which the Supreme Quack 
should inherit: and so all things were fallen into the 

5 yellow leaf, and fast hastening to noisome corruption: 
for such an Era, perhaps no better Prophet than a 
parti-colored Zany-Prophet, concealing (from himself 
and others) his prophetic significance in such unex- 
pected vestures, — was deserved, or would have been 

lo in place.> K precious medicine lay hidden in floods 
of coarsest, most composite treacle; the world swal- 
lowed the treacle, for it suited the world's palate; 
and now, after half a century, may the medicine also 
begin to show itself! James Boswell belonged, in his 

15 corruptible part, to the lowest classes of mankind; a 
foolish, inflated creature, swimming in an element of 
self-conceit: but in his corruptible there dwelt an 
incorruptible, all the more impressive and indubitable 
for the strange lodging it had taken X£^' 

20 Consider, too, with what force, diligence, and 
vivacity he has rendered back all this which, in John- 
son's neighborhood, his "open sense" had so eagerly 
and freely taken in. That loose-flowing, careless- 
looking Work of his is as a picture painted by one of 

25 Nature's own Artists; the best possible resemblance 
of a Reality; like the very image thereof in a clear 
mirror. Which indeed it was: let but the mirror be 
clear, this is the great point; the picture must and 
will be genuine. How the babbling Bozzy, inspired 

30 only by love, and the recognition and vision which 
love can lend, epitomises nightly the words of Wis- 
dom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, by 



82 CARLYLE OIV 

little and little, unconsciously works together for us 
a whole Johnsoniad 2 a more free, perfect, sunlit, and 
spirit-speaking likeness than for many centuries had 
been drawn by man of man ! Scarcely since the days 
of Homer has the feat been equalled; indeed, in many 5 
senses, this also is a kind of heroic poem. The fit 
Odyssey of our unheroic age was to be written, not 
sung; of a Thinker, not of a Fighter; and (for want 
of a Homer) by the first open soul that might offer, — 
looked such even through the organs of a Boswell. 10 
We do the man's intellectual endowment great wrong, 
if we measure it by its mere logical outcome ; though 
here, too, there is not wanting a light ingenuity, a 
figurativeness and fanciful sport, with glimpses of 
insight far deeper than the common. But Boswell'sis 
grand intellectual talent was (as such ever is) an 
unconscious one, of far higher reach and significance 
than Logic; and showed itself in the whole, not in 
parts. Here again we have that old saying verified, 
"The heart sees farther than the head." 20 

Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill- 
assorted, glaring mixture of the highest and the lowest. 
What, indeed, is man's life generally but a kind of 
beast-godhood; the god in us triumphing more and 
more over the beast ; striving more and more to sub- 25 
due it under his feet? Did not the Ancients, in their 
wise, perennially-significant way, figure Nature itself, 
their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling 
of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular 
in its upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy 30 
feet of a goat? The union of melodious, celestial 
Free-will and Reason with foul Irrationality and Lust; 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 83 

in which, nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious unspeak- 
able Fear and half-mad panic Awe ; as for mortals 
there well might! And is not man a microcosm, or 
epitomised mirror of that same Universe; or rather, is 

5 not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of his own 
fearful and wonderful being, "the waste fantasy of 
his own dream?" No wonder that man, that each 
man, and James Boswell like the others, should 
resemble it! The peculiarity in his case was the 

10 unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: 
the highest lay side by side with the lowest ; not 
morally combined with it and spiritually transfiguring 
it, but tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with 
it, and from time to time, as the mad alternation 

15 chanced, irradiating it, or eclipsed by it, (_^-;^ 

The world, as we said, has been but unjust to him ; 
discerning only the outer terrestrial and often sordid 
mass ; without eye, as it generally is, for his inner 
divine secret; and thus figuring him no wise as a 

20 god Pan, but simply of the bestial species, like the 
cattle on a thousand hills. Nay, sometimes a strange 
enough hypothesis has been started of him ; as if it 
were in virtue even of these same bad qualities that 
he did his good work; as if it were the very fact of his 

25 being among the worst men in this world that had 
enabled him to write one of the best books therein ! 
Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say, never rose 
in human soul. Bad is by its nature negative, and 
can do nothitig j whatsoever enables us to do any thing 

30 is by its very nature ^<?<?^/. Alas, that there should be 
teachers in Israel, or even learners, to whom this world- 
ancient fact is still problematical, or even deniable! 



§4 CARLYLE OM 

Boswell wrote a good Book because he had a heart 
and an eye to discern Wisdom, and an utterance to 
render it forth ; because of his free insight, his lively 
talent, above all, of his Love and childlike Open- 
mindedness. His sneaking sycophancies, his greedi- 5 
ness and forwardness, whatever was bestial and earthly 
in him, are so many blemishes in his Book, which 
still disturb us in its clearness; wholly hindrances, 
not helps. Towards Johnson, however, his feeling 
was not Sycophancy, which is the lowest, but Rever- 10 
ence, which is the highest of human feelings. None 
but a reverent man (which so unspeakably few are) 
could have found his way from Boswell's environment 
to Johnson's: if such worship for real God-made 
superiors showed itself also as worship for apparent 15 
Tailor-made superiors, even as hollow interested 
mouth-worship for such, — the case, in this composite 
human nature of ours, was not miraculous, the more 
was the pity! But for ourselves, let every one of us 
cling to this last article of Faith, and know it as the 20 
beginning of all knowledge worth the name: That 
neither James Boswell's good Book, nor any other 
good thing, in any time or in any place, was, is, or 
can be performed by any man in virtue of his badness, 
but always and solely in spite thereof. 25 

As for the Book itself, questionless the universal 
favor entertained fi)r it is well merited. In worth as 
a Book we have rated it beyond any other product of 
the eighteenth century: all Johnson's own Writings, 
laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand 30 
on a quite inferior level to it; already, indeed, they 
are becoming obsolete for tliis generation; and for 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 85 

some future generation may be valuable chiefly as Pro- 
legomena and expository Scholia to this Johnsoniad of 
Boswell. Which of us but remembers, as one of the 
sunny spots in his existence, the day when he opened 

5 these airy volumes, fascinating him by a true natural- 
magic ! It was as if the curtains of the past were drawn 
aside, and we looked mysteriously into a kindred coun- 
try, where dwelt our Fathers ; inexpressibly dear to us, 
but which had seemed forever hidden from our eyes. 

10 For the dead Night had engulfed it; all was gone, 
vanished as if it had not been. Nevertheless, won- 
drously given back to us, there once more it lay; all 
bright, lucid, blooming; a little island of Creation 
amid the circumambient Void. There it still lies; 

15 like a thing stationary, imperishable, over which 
changeful Time were now accumulating itself in vain, 
and could not, any longer, harm it or hide it. 

If we examine by what charm it is that men are 
still held to this Life of Johnson., now when so much 

20 else has been forgotten, the main part of the answer 
will perhaps be found in that speculation "on the 
import of Reality.,'''' communicated to the world, last 
Month, in this Magazine. 1l\\q Johnsoniad oi Boswell 
turns on objects that in very deed existed; it is all 

25 true. So far other in melodiousness of tone, it vies 
with the Odyssey, or surpasses it, in this one point: to 
us these read pages, as those chanted hexameters were 
to the first Greek hearers, are, in the fullest, deepest 
sense, wholly credible. All the wit and wisdom lying 

30 embalmed in Boswell's Book, plenteous as these are, 
could not have saved it. Far more scientific instruc- 
tion (mere excitement and enlightenment of the think- 



86 CARLVLE ON 

iiig power) can be found in twenty other works of that 
time, which make but a quite secondary impression 
on us. The other works of that time, however, fall 
under one of two classes: either they are professedly 
Didactic; and, in that way, mere Abstractions, Philo- 5 
sophic Diagrams, incai)able of interesting us much 
otlierwise than as Euclid's Elements may do; or else, 
with all their vivacity and pictorial richness of color, 
they are Fictions and not Realities. Deep, truly, as Herr 
Sauerteig urges, is the force of this consideration : 10 
the thing here stated is a fact; these figures, that local 
habitation, are not shadow but substance. In virtue 
of sucli advantages, see how a very lioswell may 
become Poetical ! 

Critics insist much on the poet that he should com- 15 
municate an "Infinitude" to his delineation; that by 
intensity of conception, by that gift of "transcendental 
Thought," wliich is fitly named ^^^///V/i" and inspiration, 
he should inform the Finite with a certain Infinitude 
of significance; or, as they sometimes say, ennoble 20 
the Actual into Idealness. They are riglU in their 
precept; they mean rightly. But in cases like this of 
the JoJinsoniad (such is the dark grandeur of that 
"Time-element," wherein man's soul here below 
lives imprisoned), the Poet's task is, as it were, done 25 
to his hand: Time itself, which is the outer veil of 
eternity, invests, of its own accord, with an authentic, 
felt "infinitude" whatsoever it has once embraced in 
its mysterious folds. Consider all that lies in that 
one word Past! What a pathetic, sacred, in every 30 
s&w^e poetic , meaning is implied in it; a meaning grow- 
ing ever the clearer, the farther we recede in Time, — 



BO SWELL'S LIl-E OF JO UN SON. 87 

the //lore of that same Past we have to look through ! — 
On which ground indeed must Sauerteig have built, 
and not without plausibility, in that strange thesis of 
his: "that History, after all, is the true Poetry; that 

5 Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than Fiction ; 

nay that even in the right interpretation of Reality 

and History does genuine Poetry consist." 

ih-^hvLS for Boswell's Life of Joh/iso/i has Time done, 

IS Time still doing, what no ornament of Art or Arti- 

10 fice could have done for it. Rough Samuel and sleek 
wheedling James ri'^/r, and a/-e /lot. Their Life and 
whole personal Environment has melted into air. 
The Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet Street; but 
where now is its scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale lov- 

15 ing, cocked-hatted, pot-bellied Landlord; its rosy- 
faced, assiduous Landlady, with all her shining brass- 
pans, waxed tables, well-filled larder-shelves; her 
cooks, and bootjacks, and errand-boys, and watery- 
mouthed hangers-on? Gone! Gone! The becking 

20 waiter, that with wreathed smiles, wont to spread for 
Samuel and Bozzy their 'supper of the gods,' has 
long since pocketed his last sixpence ; and vanished, 
sixpences and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing. The 
Bottles they drank out of are all broken, the Chairs 

25 they sat on all rotted and burnt ; the very Knives and 
Forks they ate with have rusted to the heart, and 
become brown oxide of iron, and mingled with the 
indiscriminate clay. All, all, has vanished ; in very 
deed and truth, like that baseless fabric of Prospero's 

30 air-vision. Of the Mitre Tavern nothing but the bare 
walls remain there: of London, of England, of the 
World, nothing but the bare walls remain; and these 



88 CARLYLE ON 

also decaying (were they of adamant), only slower. 
The mysterious River of Existence rushes on: a new 
Billow thereof has arrived, and lashes wildly as ever 
round the old embankments; but the former Billow, 
with its loud, mad eddyings, where is it? — Where! — 5 
Now this Book of Boswell's, this is precisely a Revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Destiny; so that Time shall not 
utterly, not so soon by several centuries, have dominion 
over us. A little row of Naphtha-lamps, with its 
line of Naphtha-light, burns clear and holy through 10 
the dead Night of the Past:- they who were gone are 
still here; though hidden they are revealed, though 
dead they yet speak. There it shines, that little 
miraculously lamp-lit Pathway; shedding its feebler 
and feebler twilight into the boundless dark Oblivion, 15 
for all that our Johnson touched has become illumi- 
nated for us: on which miraculous little pathway we 
can still travel, and see wonders. ^^ 

It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict 
measured sobriety, to say tliat this Book of Boswell's 20 
will give us more real insight into the History of Eng- 
land during those days than twenty other Books, 
falsely entitled "Histories," which take to themselves 
that special aim. What good is it to me though 
innumerable SmoUetts and Belshams keep dinning in 25 
my ears that a man named George the Third was 
born and bred up, and a man named George tlie 
Second died; that Walpole, and the Pelhams, and 
Chatham, and Rockingham, and Shelburn, and North, 
with their Coalition or their Separation Ministries, all 30 
ousted one another; and vehemently scrambled for 
"the thing they called the Rudder of Government, 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 89 

but which was in reaHty the Spigot of Taxation"? 
That debates were held, and infinite jarring and 
jargoning took place; and road-bills and enclosure- 
bills, and game-bills and India-bills, and Laws which 

5 no man can number, which happily few men needed 
to trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, 
were enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer? 
That he who sat in Chancery and rayed-out specula- 
tion from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, 

10 now a man that did not squint? To the hungry and 
thirsty mind all this avails next to nothing. These 
men and these things, we indeed know, did swim, by 
strength or by specific — levity (as apples or as horse- 
dung), on the top of the current ; but is it by painfully 

15 noting the courses, eddyings, and bobbings hither and 
thither of such drift-articles that you will unfold to 
me the nature of the current itself; of that mighty- 
rolling, loud-roaring Life- current, bottomless as the 
foundations of the Universe, mysterious as its Author? 

20 The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, and 
Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but 
the Life of Man in England: what men did, thought 
suffered, enjoyed ; the form, especially the spirit, of 
their terrestial existence, its outward environment, 

25 its inward principle ; how and ivhat it was ; whence it 
proceeded, whither it was tending. 

Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the busi- 
ness called "History," in these so enlightened and 
illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you 

30 gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest 
shadow of an answer to that great question: How 
men lived and had their being; were it but economi- 



9° CARLYLE ON 

cally, as what wages they got, and what they bought 
with these? Unhappily you cannot. History will 
throw no light on any such matter. At the point 
where living memory fails, it is all darkness; Mr. 
Senior and Mr. Sadler must still eiebate tliis simplest 5 
of all elements in the condition of the Past: Whether 
men were better off, in their mere larders and pantries, 
or were worse off than now! History, as it stands all 
bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instruc- 
tive than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon- 10 
board. How my Prime Minister was appointed is of 
less moment to me than How my House Servant was 
hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histories of King 
and Courtiers were well exchanged against the tenth 
part of one good History of Booksellers. 15 

For example, I would fain know the History of 
Scotland: who can tell it me? "Robertson," cry 
innumerable voices; "Robertson against the world." 
I open Robertson; and find there, through long ages 
too confused for narrative, and fit only to be presented 20 
in the way of epitome and distilled essence, a cunning 
answer and hypothesis, not to this question: By 
whom, and by what means, when and how, was this 
fair broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, 
Temples, Schools, Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, Na- 25 
tional Character, created, and made arable, verdant, 
peculiar, great, here as I can see some fair section of 
it lying, kind and strong (like some Bacchus-tamed 
Lion), from the Castle-hill of Edinburgh? — 'but to 
this other question; How did the king keep himself 30 
alive in those old days; and restrain so many Butcher 
g^ron§ and ravenous Henchmen fi-qm utterly extirpat- 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHXSO.V. 91 

ing one another, so that killing went on in some sort 
of moderation? In the one little Letter of .'Eneas 
Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more of History 
than in all this. — At length, however, we come to a 

5 luminous age, interesting enough: to the age of the 
Reformation. All Scotland is awakened to a second 
higher life; the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every 
bosom, agitates every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, 
fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. To 

10 the herdsman, among his cattle in remote woods; to 
the craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatched workshop, 
among his rude guild-brethren ; to the great and to 
the little, a new light has arisen: in town and hamlet 
groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed 

15 or ungovernable tongues; the great and the little go 
forth together to do battle for the Lord against the 
mighty. We ask, with breathless eagerness: How 
was it; how went it on? Let us understand it, let 
us see it, and know it! — 1\\ reply, is handed us a really 

20 graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle 
(as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary 
Stuart, a Beauty, but over lightheaded ; and Henry 
Darnley, a Booby, who had fine legs. How these 
first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; 

25 then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and blew 
one another up with gunpowder: this, and not the 
History of Scotland, is what we good-naturedly read. 
Nay, by other hands, something like a horse-load of 
other Books have been written to prove that it was 

30 the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was 
not she. Who or what it was, the thing once for all 
peing 50 effectw^lly done, concerns us little, To know 



92 CARLYLE ON 

Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable increase 
to knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and see him 
with burning candle, from centre to skin, were no 
increase of knowledge at all. — Thus is History written. 

Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should 5 
be "the essence of innumerable Biographies," will tell 
us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Bio- 
graphy may do, pleasantly and of its own accord ! The 
time is approaching when History will be attempted 
on quite other principles; when the Court, the Senate, 10 
and the Battle-field, receding more and more into 
the back-ground, the Temple, the Workshop, and 
Social Hearth, will advance more and more into the 
foreground; and History will not content itself with 
shaping some answer to that question: How were men 15 
taxed and kept quiet then? but will seek to answer 
this other infinitely wider and higher question: How 
and \s\i'AXwere men then? Not our Government only, 
or the ''house wherein our life was led," but the Life 
itself we led there, will be inquired into. Of which 20 
latter it may be found that Government, in any 
modern sense of the word, is after all but a secondary 
condition: in the mere sense of Taxation znd Keeping 
quiet^ a small, almost a pitiful one. — Meanwhile let 
us welcome such Boswells, each in his degree, 3525 
bring us any genuine contribution, were it never so 
inadequate, so inconsiderable. 

An exception was early taken against this Life of 
Johnson^ and all similar enterprises, which we here 
recommend; and has been transmitted from critic to 30 
critic, and repeated in their several dialects, uninter- 
ruptedly, ever since : That such jottings-down of car^- 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSOIV. 93 

less conversation are an infringement of social privacy; 
a crime against our highest Freedom, the Freedom of 
man's intercourse with man. To this accusation, 
which we have read and heard oftener than enough, 

5 might it not be well for once to offer the flattest con- 
tradiction, and plea of Not at all guilty ? Not that 
conversation is noted down, but that conversation 
should not deserve noting down, is the evil. Doubtless 
if conversation be falsely recorded, then is it simply a 

lo Lie and worthy of being swept with all despatch to 
the Father of Lies. But if, on the other hand, con- 
versation can be authentically recorded and any one 
is ready for the task, let him by all means proceed 
with it ; let conversation be kept in remembrance to 

15 the latest date possible. Nay should the conscious- 
ness that a man may be among us "taking notes" 
tend, in any measure, to restrict those floods of idle 
insincere speech, with which the thought of mankind 
is well nigh drowned, — were it other than the most 

20 indubitable benefit? He who speaks honestly cares 
not, needs not care, though his words be preserved to 
remotest time: for him who speaks ^/Vhonestly, the 
fittest of all punishments seems to be this same, which 
the nature of the case provides. The dishonest 

25 speaker, not he only who purposely utters falsehoods, 
but he who does not purposely, and with sincere heart, 
utter Truth, and Truth alone; who babbles he knows 
not what, and has clapped no bridle on his tongue, 
but lets it run racket, ejecting chatter and futility, — 

30 is among the most indisputable malefactors omitted, 
or inserted, in the Criminal Calendar. To him that will 
well consider it, idle speaking is precisely the begin- 



94 CARLYLE ON 

ning of all Hollowness, Halfness, Infidelity (want of 
Faithfulness); the genial atmosphere in which rank 
weeds of every kind attain the mastery over noble 
fruits in man's life, and utterly clioke them out: one 
of the most crying maladies of these days, and to be 5 
testified against, and in all ways to the uttermost with- 
stood. Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow 
depth, was that old precept: Watch thy tongue ; out 
of it are the issues of Life! "Man is ])roperly an 
incarnated zvord :'" the ivord that he speaks is the 10 
man himself. Were eyes put into our head, that we 
might see ; or only that we might fancy, and plausibly 
pretend, we had seen? Was the tongue suspended 
there, that it might tell truly what we had seen, and 
make man the soul's-brother of man; or only that it if, 
might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul-confusing, and 
so divide man, as by enchanted walls of Darkness, 
from union with man? Thou who wearest that cun- 
ning. Heaven-made organ, a Tongue, think well of 
this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy 20 
thought hath silently matured itself, till thou have 
other than mad and mad-making noises to emit: hold 
ihy tongue (thou hast it a-holding) till some meaning lie 
behind, to set it wagging. Consider the significance 
of Silence; it is boundless, never by meditating to 25 
be exhausted ; unspeakably profitable to thee ! Cease 
that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to 
waste, to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor: 
out of Silence comes thy strength. "Speech is silvern, 
Silence is golden ; Speech is human. Silence is divine." 30 
Fool! thinkest thou that because no Boswell is there 
with ass-skin and black-lead to note thy jargon, it 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSOAK 95 

therefore dies and is harmless? Nothing dies, nothing 
can die. No idlest word thou speakest but is a seed 
cast into Time, and grows through all Eternity! The 
Recording Angel, consider it well, is no fable, but 
5 the truest of truths: the paper tablets thou canst 
burn ; of the "iron leaf" there is no burning. — Truly, 
if we can permit God Almighty to note down our con- 
versation, thinking it good enough for Him, — any 
poor Boswell need not scruple to work his will of it, 

id^' Leaving now this our English Odyssey, with its 
Singer and Scholiast, let us come to the Ulysses ; that 
great Samuel Johnson himself, the far-experienced, 
"much-enduring man," whose labors and pilgrimage 
are here sung. A full-length image of his Existence 

15 has been preserved for us: and he, perhaps of all liv- 
ing Englishmen, was the one who best deserved that 
honor. For if it is true and now almost proverbial, 
that "the Life of the lowest mortal, if faithfully 
recorded, would be interesting to the highest;" how 

20 much more when the mortal in question was already 
distinguished in fortune and natural quality, so that his 
thinkings and doings were not significant of himself 
only, but of large masses of mankind! "There is 
not a man whom I meet on the streets," says one, 

25 "but I could like, were it otherwise convenient, to 
know his Biography:" nevertheless, could an enlight- 
ened curiosity be so far gratified, it must be owned 
the Biography of most ought to be, in an extreme 
degree, sununary. \x\ this world there is so wonder- 

30 fully little self-subsistence among men ; next to no orig- 
inality (though never absolutely none): one Life is too 



96 CARLYLE OM 

servilely the copy of another; and so in whole thou- 
sands of them you find little that is properly new ; noth- 
ing but the old song sung by a new voice, with better 
or worse execution, here and there an ornamental 
quaver, and false notes enough: but the fundamental 5 
tune is ever the same; and for the words, these, all 
that they meant stands written generally on the Church- 
yard-stone: Natus sum; esuricbaiii, quareham ; nunc 
repletus requiesco. Mankind sail their Life-voyage in 
huge fleets, following some single whale-fishing or her- 10 
ring-fishing Commodore: the log-book of each differs 
not, in essential purport, from that of any other; nay 
the most have no legible log-book (reflection, observa- 
tion not being among their talents); keep no reckoning, 
only keep in sight of the flagship,— and fish. Read the 15 
Commodore's Papers (know Jiis I>ife) ; and even your 
lover of that street Biography will have learned the 
most of what he sought after. 

Or, the servile iinitancy, and yet also a nobler rela- 
tionship and mysterious union to one another which 20 
lies in such imitancy, of Mankind might be illustrated 
under the different figure (itself nowise original) of 
a Flock of Sheep. Sheep go in flocks for three rea- 
sons: First, because they are of a gregarious temper, 
and love to be together: Secondly, because of their 25 
cowardice; they are afraid to be left alone: Thirdly, 
because the common run of them are dull of sight, to 
a proverb, and can have no choice in roads; sheep 
can in fact see nothing; in a celestial Luminary, and 
a scoured pewter Tankard, would discern only that 30 
both dazzled them, and were of unspeakable glory. 
How like their fellow-creatures of the human species! 



BOSWELTJS LTFE OF JOHNSON. 97 

Men, too, as was from the first maintained here, are 
gregarious; then surely faint-hearted enough, trem- 
bhng to be left by themselves; above all, dull-sighted, 
down to the verge of utter blindness. Thus are we 

5 seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, if we run at 
all; and after what foolish scoured Tankards, mistak- 
ing them for suns! Foolish Turnip-lanterns likewise, 
to all appearance supernatural, keep whole nations 
quaking, their hair on end. Neither know we, except 

loby blind habit, where the good pastures lie: solely 
when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know 
it, and chew it ; also when grass is bitter and scant, 
we know it, — and bleat and butt: these last two facts 
we know of a truth and in very deed. — Thus do Men 

15 and Sheep play their parts on this Nether Earth; 
wandering restlessly in large masses, they know not 
whither; for most part each following his neighbor, 
and his own nose. 

Nevertheless, not always ; look better, you shall 

20 find certain that do, in some small degree, knotv 
whithe}-. Sheep have their Bell-wether; some ram of 
the folds, endued with more valor, with clearer vision 
than other sheep; he leads them through the wolds, 
by height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, 

25 for covert or for pleasant provender; courageously 
marching, and if need be, leaping, and with hoof and 
horn doing battle, in the van: him they courageously, 
and with assured heart, follow. Touching it is, as 
every herdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous 

30 devotedness these woolly Hosts adhere to their 
Wether; and rush after him, through good report and 
through bad report, were it into safe shelters and 



98 CARLYLE OM 

green tliyniy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the 
jaws of devouring lions. Ever also must we recall 
that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye: "If 
you hold a stick before the Wether, so that he, by 
necessity, leaps in passing you, and then withdraw 5 
your stick, the Flock will nevertheless all leap as he 
did; and the thousandth sheep shall be found impetu- 
ously vaulting over air, as the first did over an other- 
wise impassable barrier." Reader, wouldst thou 
understand Society, ponder well those ovine proceed- 10 
ings; thou wilt find them all curiously significant. 

Now if sheep always, how much more must men 
always, have their Chief, their Guide! Man too is 
by nature quite thoroughly gregarious : nay, ever he 
struggles to be something more, to be social : not even 15 
when Society has become impossible does that deep- 
seated tendency and effort forsake him. Man, as if 
by miraculous magic, imparts his Thoughts, his Mood 
of mind to man ; an unspeakable communion binds 
all past, present, and future men into one indissoluble 20 
whole, almost into one living Individual. Of which 
high, mysterious Truth, this disposition to imitate^ to 
lead and be led, this impossibility not to imitate, is 
the most constant, and one of the simplest manifesta- 
tions. To "imitate!" which of us all can measure 25 
the significance that lies in that one word? By virtue 
of which the infant Man, born at Wolstrop, grows up 
not to be a hairy Savage, and chewer of Acorns, but 
an Isaac Newton and Discoverer of Solar Systems! — 
Thus, both in a celestial and terrestrial sense, are we 30 
a Flock, such as there is no other: nay, looking away 
from the base and ludicrous to the sublime and sacred 



BOS WELL'S LIFE OE JOHNSON: 99 

side of the matter (since in every matter there are two 
sides), liave not we also a Shepherd, "if we will but 
hear his voice?" Of those stupid multitudes there is 
no one but has an immortal Soul within him ; a reflex 

5 and living image of God's whole Universe : strangely, 
from its dim environment, the light of the Highest 
looks through him; — for which reason, indeed, it is 
that we claim a brotherhood with him, and so love to 
know his History, and come into clearer and clearer 

lo union with all that he feels, and says, and does. 

However, the chief thing to be noted was this: 
Amid those dull millions, who, as a dull flock, roll 
hither and thither, whithersoever they are led; and 
seem all sightless and slavish, accomplishing, attempt- 

15 ing little save what the animal instinct (in its some- 
what higher kind) might teach (to keep themselves 
and their young ones alive), — are scattered here and 
there superior natures, whose eye is not destitute of 
free vision, nor their heart of free volition. These 

20 latter, therefore, examine and determine, not what 
others do, but what it is right to do; towards which 
and which only, will they, wath such force as is given 
them, resolutely endeavor: for if the Machine, living 
or inanimate, is merely /V</, or desires to be fed, and 

25 so works J the Person can 7C'///, and so do. These are 
properly our Men, our Great Men; the guides of the 
dull host, — which follows them as by an irrevocable 
decree. They are the chosen of the world: they had 
this rare faculty not only of "supposing" and "inclin- 

30 ing to think," but of knoiviug and believing; the nature 
of their being was, that they lived not by Hearsay 
but by clear Vision ; while others hovered and swam 



TOO CARLYLE ON 

along, in the grand Vanity-fair of the World, blinded 
by the mere "Shows of things," these saw into the 
Things themselves, and could walk as men having an 
eternal loadstar, and with their feet on sure paths. 
Thus was there a Reality in their existence; some- 5 
thing of a perennial character; in virtue of which 
indeed it is that the memory of them is perennial. 
Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences 
only its gilt Popinjays or soot-smeared Mumbojumbos, 
must needs die with it : though he have been crowned 10 
seven times in the Capitol, or seventy and seven times, 
and Rumor have blown his praises to all the four 
winds, deafening every ear therewith, — it avails not; 
there was nothing universal, nothing eternal in him; 
he must fade away, even as the Popinjay-gildings 15 
and Scarecrow-apparel, which he could not see 
through. The great man does, in good truth, belong 
to his own age; nay more so than any other man; 
being properly the synopsis and epitome of such age 
with its interests and influences: but belongs likewise 20 
to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was 
transitory in him passes away ; and an immortal part 
remains, the significance of which is in strict speech 
inexhaustible, — as that of every t-eal object is. Aloft, 
conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, 25 
serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every new 
generation a new lesson and monition. Well is his 
Life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever, in 
the new dialect of new times, of re-writing and re- 
interpreting. 30 

Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not rank- 
ing among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. lOl 

admitted into that sacred band ; whose existence was 
no idle Dream, but a Reality which he transacted 
awake ; nowise a Clothes-horse and Patent Digester, 
but a genuine Man. By nature he was gifted for the 

5 noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood, and 
Guidance of mankind; by destiny, moreover, he was 
appointed to this task, and did actually, according to 
strength, fufil the same: so that always the question, 
How; in 7vliat spirit ; under what shape i remains for 

lous to be asked and answered concerning him. For as 
the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of 
every good man still an indubitable Gospel, and 
preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so 
that Devils even must believe and tremble, these 

15 gladdest tidings: "Man is heaven-born; not the thrall 
of Circumstances, of Necessity, but the victorious 
subduer thereof: behold how he can become the 
'Announcer of himself and of his Freedom;' and is 
ever what the Thinker has named him, 'the Messias 

20 of Nature!' " — Yes, Reader, all this that thou hast so 
often heard about "force of circumstances," "the 
creature of the time," "balancing of motives," and 
who knows what melancholy stuff to the like purport, 
wherein thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest para- 

25 lysed, and hast no force left, — was in very truth, if 
Johnson and waking men are to be credited, little 
other than a hag-ridden vision of death-sleep ; some 
//(^//-fact, more fatal at times than a whole false- 
hood. Shake it off; awake; up and be doing, even 

30 as it is given thee! 

The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in 
every Life, which it is the meaning and task of Life 



I02 CARLYLE ON 

to reconcile, was in Johnson's wider than in most. 
Seldom, for any man, has the contrast between the 
etliereal heavenward side of things, and the dark sor- 
did earthward, been more glaring: whether we look 
at Nature's work with him or Fortune's, from first to 5 
last, heterogeneity, as of sunbeams and miry clay, is 
on all hands manifest. Whereby indeed, only this was 
declared. That much Life had been given him ; many 
things to triumph over, a great work to do. Happily 
also he did it; better than the most. 10 

Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost 
poetic soul ; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, 
unsightly body: he that could never rest had not 
limbs that would move with him, but only roll and 
waddle: the inward eye, all-penetrating, all-embrac- 15 
ing, must look through bodily windows that were dim, 
half-blinded; he so loved men, and "never once saiv 
the human face divine!" Not less did he prize the 
love of men; he was eminently social; the approbation 
of his fellows was dear to him, "valuable," as he 20 
owned, "if from the meanest of human beings:" yet 
the first impression he produced on every man was 
to be one of aversion, almost of disgust. By Nature 
it was further ordered that the imperious Johnson 
should be born poor: the ruler-soul, strong in its 25 
native royalty, generous, uncontrollable, like the lion 
of the woods, was to be housed, then, in such a dwell- 
ing-place: of Disfigurement, Disease, and, lastly, of 
a Poverty which itself made him the servant of serv- 
ants. Thus was the born King likewise a born Slave: 30 
the divine spirit of Music must awake imprisoned 
amid duU-croaking universal Discords; the Ariel finds 



BOS WELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSOiV. 103 

himself encased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So 
is it more or less, we know (and thou, O Reader, 
knowest and feelest even now), with all men: yet 
with the fewest men in any such degree as with 

5 Johnson. 

Fortune, moreover, which had so managed his first 
appearance in the world, lets not her hand lie idle, or 
turn the other way, but works unweariedly in the same 
spirit, while he is journeying tlirough the world. 

10 What such a mind, stamped of Nature's noblest 
metal, though in so ungainly a die, was specially and 
best of all fitted for, might still be a question. To 
none of the world's few Incorporated Guilds could 
he have adjusted himself without difficulty, without 

15 distortion ; in none been a Guild-Brother well at ease. 
Perhaps, if we look to the strictly practical nature of his 
faculty, to the strength, decision, method that manifests 
itself in him, we may say that his calling was rather 
towards Active than Speculative life; that as States- 

20 man (in the higher, now obsolete sense), Lawgiver, 
Ruler; in short, as Doer of the Work, he had shone 
even more than as Speaker of the Word. His honesty 
of heart, his courageous temper, the value he set on 
things outward and material, might have made him a 

25 King among Kings. Had the golden age of those 
new French Prophets, when it shall be: A cJiacun 
selon sa capacite ; a chaqiie capacite selon ses ceuvi'cs, but 
arrived! Indeed, even in our brazen and Birming- 
ham-lacker age, he himself regretted that he had 

30 not become a Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, 
which he might well have done. However, it was 
Otherwise appointed. To no man does Fortune thrgvy 



I04 CARLYLE ON 

open all the kingdoms of this world, and say: It is 
thine ; choose where thou wilt dwell ! To the most 
she opens hardly the smallest cranny or doghutch, and 
says, not without asperity: There, that is thine 
while thou canst keep it ; nestle thyself there, and 5 
bless Heaven! Alas, men must fit themselves into 
many things: some forty years ago, for instance, the 
noblest and ablest Man in all the British lands might 
be seen not swaying the royal sceptre, or the pontiff's 
censer, on the pinnacle of the World, but gauging ale- 10 
tubs in the little burgh of Dumfries! Johnson came a 
little nearer the mark than Burns: but with him too 
"Strength was mournfully denied its arena; " he too 
had to fight Fortune at strange odds, all his life long. 

Johnson's disposition for royalty (had the Fates so 15 
ordered it) is well seen in early boyhood. "His 
favorites," says Bosvvell, "used to receive very liberal 
assistance from him ; and such was the submission 
and deference with which he was treated, that three 
of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, 20 
used to come in the morning as his humble attendants, 
and carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, 
while he sat upon his back; and one on each side sup- 
ported him; and thus was he borne triumphant." 
The purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with his 25 
open mouth, and face of bruised honeycomb; yet 
already dominant, imperial, irresistible! Not in the 
"King's-chair" (of human arms) as we see, do his 
three satellites carry him along: rather on the 
Tyranfs-saddle^ the back of his fellow-creature, must 30 
he ride prosperous! — The child is father of the man. 
He who hacj seen fifty years into coming Time, would 



BOSJVELL'S LIFE OF JO/nVSO/V. 105 

have felt that little spectacle of mischievous school- 
boys to be a great one. For us, who look back on it, 
and what followed it, now from afar, there arise 
questions enough: How looked these urchins? What 

5 jackets and galligaskins had they ; felt headgear, or 
of dogskin leather? What was old Lichfield doing 
then; what thinking?^ — -and so on, through the whole 
series of Corporal Trim's "auxiliary verbs." A 
picture of it all fashions itself together; — only un- 

10 happily we have no brush and no fingers. 

Boyhood is now past ; the ferula of Pedagogue 
waves harmless, in the distance: Samuel has struggled 
up to uncouth bulk and youthhood, wrestling with 
Disease and Poverty, all the way; which two continue 

15 still his companions. At College we see little of him ; 
yet thus much, that things went not well. A rugged 
wild-man of the desert, awakened to the feeling of 
himself; proud as the proudest, poor as the poorest; 
stoically shut up, silently enduring the incurable: 

20 what a world of blackest gloom, with sun-gleams and 
pale tearful moon-gleams, and flickerings of a celestial 
and an infernal splendor, was this that now opened 
for him! But the weather is wintry; and the toes of 
the man are looking through his shoes. His muddy 

25 features grow of a purple and sea-green color; a 
flood of black indignation mantling beneath. A truc- 
ulent, raw-boned figure ! Meat he has probably little ; 
hope he has less: his feet, as we said, have come into 
brotherhood with the cold mire. 

30 " Shall I be particular," inquires Sir John Hawkins, " and 
relate a circumstance of his distress, that cannot be imputed to 
him as an effect of his own extravagance or irregularity, and con- 



<i5 



Io6 CARLYLE ON 

sequently reflects no disgrace on his memory ? He had scarce 
any change of raiment, and, in a short time after Corbet left him, 
but one pair of shoes, and those so old that his feet were seen 
through them : a gentleman of his college, the father of an emi- 
nent clergyman now living, directed a servitor one morning to 5 
place a new pair at the door of Johnson's chamber ; who seeing 
them upon his first going out, so far forgot liimself and the spirit 
which must have actuated his unknown benefactor, that, with all 
the indignation of an insulted man, he threw them away." 

How exceedingly surprising! — The Rev. Dr. Hall lo 
remarks: "As far as we can judge from a cursory view 
of the weekly account in the buttery-books, Johnson 
appears to have lived as well as other commoners and 
scholars." Alas! such "cursory view of the buttery 
books," now from the safe distance of a century, in 15 
the safe chair of a College Mastership, is one thing; 
the continual view of the empty (or locked) buttery it- 
self was quite a different thing. But hear our Knight, 
how he farther discourses. "Johnson," quoth Sir 
John, "could not at this early period of his life divest 20 
himself of an idea that poverty was disgraceful; and 
was very severe in his censures of that economy in 
both our Universities, which exacted at meals the 
attendance of poor scholars, under the several denom- 
inations of Servitors in the one, and Sizers in t]ie25 
other: he thought that the scholar's, like the Christian 
life, levelled all distinctions of rank and worldly pre- 
eminence; but in this he was niistakoi : civil polity," 
,&c., &c. — Too true! It is man's lot to err. 

However, Destiny, m all ways, means to prove 30 
the mistaken Samuel, and see what stuff is in him. 
He must leave these butteries of Oxford, Want like an 
armed man compelling him ; retreat into his father's 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 107 

mean home; and there abandon himself for a season 
to inaction, disappointment, shame, and nervous mel- 
anclioly nigh run mad : he is probably the wretchedes': 
man in wide EnglandS<S'In all ways, he too must 

5 "become perfect through suffering^ — High thoughts 
have visited him ; his College Exercises have been 
praised beyond the walls of College; Pope himself 
has seen that Translation^ and approved of it: Samuel 
had whispered to himself: I too am "one and some- 

10 what." False thoughts; that leave only misery 
behind! The fever-fire of Ambition is too painfully 
extinguished (but not cured) in the frost-bath of 
Poverty. Johnson has knocked at the gate, as one 
having a right; but there was no opening: the world 

rs lies all encircled as with brass; nowhere can he find 
or force the smallest entrance. An ushership at 
Market Bosworth, and "a disagreement between him 
and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school," 
yields him bread of affliction and water of affliction; 

20 but so bitter, that unassisted human nature cannot 
swallow them. Young Samson will grind no more in 
the Philistine mill of Bosworth; quits hold of Sir 
Wolstan, and the "domestic chaplaincy, so far at least 
as to say grace at table," and also to be "treated with 

25 what he represented as intolerable harshness;" and 
so, after "some months of such complicated misery," 
feeling doubtless that there are worse things in the 
world than quick death by Famine, "relinquishes a 
situation, which all his life afterwards he recollected 

30 with the strongest aversion, and even horror." Men 
like Johnson are properly called the Forlorn Hope of 
the world: judge whether his hope was forlorn or not. 



lo8 CARLYLE ON 

by this Letter to a dull oily Printer who called him- 
self Sylvan ns Urban : 

" Sir, — As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the 
defect of your poetical article, you will not be displeased if (in 
order to the improvement of it) I communicate to you the senti- 5 
ments of a person who will undertake, on reasonable terms, some- 
times to fill a column. 

" His opinion is, that the public would," &c. &c. 

" If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased 
to inform me in two posts what the conditions are on which you 10 
shall expect it. Your late offer (for a Prize Poem) gives me no 
reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary 
projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart." 

^^ Reader, the generous person, to whom this Letter 
goes addressed, is "Mr. Edmund Cave, at St. John's 15 
Gate, London;" tlie addresser of it is Samuel John- 
son, in Birmingham, Warwickshire. 

Nevertheless, Life rallies in the man ; reasserts its 
right to be lived, even to be enjoyed. "Better a 
small bush," say the Scotch, "than no shelter:" ^u 
Johnson learns to be contented with humble human 
things; and is there not already an actual realized 
human Existence, all stirring and U542S o«~£very hand 
of him? Go thou and do likewis^f-'ln Birmingham 
itself, with his own purchased goose-quill, he can earn 25 
"five pounds;" nay, finally, the choicest terrestrial 
good: a Friend, who will be Wife to him! Johnson's 
marriage with the good Widow Porter has been treated 
with ridicule by many mortals, who apparently had 
no understanding thereof. That the purblind, seamy- 30 
faced Wild-man, stalking lonely, woe-stricken, like 
some Irish Gallowglass with peeled club, whose speech 



BO SWELL'S LJFE OF JOHN SO KF. 109 

no man knew, whose look all men both laughed at 
and shuddered at, should find any brave female heart 
to acknowledge, at first sight and hearing of him, 
"This is the most sensible man I ever met with ;" and 
5 then, with generous courage, to take him to itself, and 
say, Be thou mine ; be thou warmed here, and thawed 
to life! — in all this, in the kind Widow's love and pity 
for him, in Johnson's love and gratitude, there is 
actually no matter for ridicule. Their wedded life, as 
10 is the common lot, was made up of drizzle and dry 
weather; but innocence and worth dwelt in it; and 
when death had ended it, a certain sacredness: John- 
son's deathless affection for his Tetty was always ven- 
erable and noble. However, be all this as it might, 
15 Johnson is now minded to wed; and will live by the 
trade of Pedagogy, for by this also may life be kept 
in. Let the world therefore take notice: ** At -Edial 
near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentleman are 
boarded, and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by 
20 Samuel Johnson." Had this Edial enterprise pros- 
pered, how different might the issue have been ! 
Johnson had lived a life of unnoticed nobleness, or 
swoln into some amorphous Dr. Parr, of no avail to 
us; Bozzy would have dwindled into official insig- 
25 nificance, or risen by some other elevation ; old Auch- 
inleck had never been afflicted with "ane that keeped 
a schule," or obliged to violate hospitality by a: 
"Cromwell do? God, sir, he gart kings ken that 
there was a ///// in their neck!" But the Edial enter- 
30 prise did not prosper ;^ Destiny had other work 
appointed for Samuel Johnson ; and young gentlemen 
got board where they could elsewhere find it. This 



no CARLYLE ON 

man was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, in 
the most surprising way; a Man of Letters, and Ruler 
of the British Nation for some time, — not of their 
bodies merely, but of their minds, not over them, but 
/;/ them. 5 

^^ . . , 

The career of Literature could not, in Johnson s 

day, any more than now, be said to lie along the 
shores of a Pactolus: whatever else might be gathered 
there, gold-dust was nowise the chief })roduce. The 
world, from the times of Socrates, St. Paul, and far lo 
earlier, has always had its teachers; and always 
treated them in a peculiar way. A shrewd Townclerk 
(not of Ephesus), once, in founding a Burgh-Semi- 
nary, when the question came. How the School- 
masters should be maintained? delivered this brief 15 
counsel: "D — n them, keep them poor I'' Consider- 
able wisdom may lie in this aphorism,^ At all events, 
we see, the world has acted on it long, and indeed 
improved on it, — putting many a Schoolmaster of its 
great Burgh-Seminary to a death, which even cost it 20 
something. The world, it is true, had for some time 
])een too busy to go out of its way, and //// any Au- 
thor to death; however, the old sentence pronounced 
against them was found to be pretty sufficient. The 
first Writers (being Monks) were sworn to a vow of 25 
Poverty; the modern Authors had no need to swear 
to it. This was the epoch when an Otway could still 
die of hunger; not to speak of your innumerable 
Scrogginses, whom "the Muse found stretched beneath 
a rug," with "rusty grate unconscious of a fire," stock- 30 
ing-nightcap, sanded floor, and all the other escutch- 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. tH 

eons of the craft, time out of mind the heirlooms 
of Authorship. Scroggins, however, seems to have 
been but an idler; not at all so diligent as worthy Mr. 
Boyce, whom we might have seen siiiiiig up in bed, 

5 with his wearing-apparel of Blanket about him, and 
a hole slit in the same, that his hand might be at 
liberty to work in its vocation. The worst was, that 
too frequently a blackguard recklessness of temper 
ensued, incapable of turning to account what good the 

lo gods even here had provided: your Boyces acted on 
some stoico-epicurean principle of carpe dietii, as men 
do in bombarded towns, and seasons of raging pesti- 
lence; — and so had lost not only their life and pres- 
ence of mind, but their status as persons of respec- 

15 tability. The trade of Author was about one of its 

lowest ebbs when Johnson embarked on it. 
(^^^^^ccordingly we find no mention of Illuminations 
in the city of London when this same Ruler of the 
British nation arrived in it: no cannon-salvos are 

20 fired ; no flourish of drums and trumpets greets his 
appearance on the scene. He enters quite quietly, 
with some copper halfpence in his pocket; creeps 
into lodgings in Exeter Street, Strand ; and has a 
Coronation Pontiff also, of not less peculiar equip- 

25 ment, whom, with all submissiveness, he must wait 
upon, in his Vatican of St. John's Gate. This is the 



dull oily Printer alluded to above.,;.; • \i J 

" Cave's temper," says our Knight Hawkins, " was phlegm 



i 

atic : 



though he assumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name 

30 of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute 

urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which he 

once put to an author : ' Mr. , I hear you have just published 



tl2 CARLVLE OM 

a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it, upon 
the subject of music : did you write that yourself ? ' His discern- 
ment was also slow ; and as he had already at his command some 
writers of prose and verse, who, in the language of Booksellers, 
are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, 5 
or courting an intimacy with Johnson. Upon the first approach 
of a stranger, his practice was to continue sitting ; a posture in 
which he was ever to be found, and for a few minutes to continue 
silent : if at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it 
was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press, 10 
into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it. . . . 

" He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that 
meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendor of some of 
those luminaries in Literature, who favored him with their corre- 
spondence, he told him that if he would, in the evening, be at a 15 
certain alehouse in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell, he might 
have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of those 
illustrious contributors : Johnson accepted the invitation ; and 
being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat, and 
such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. 20 
Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, 
in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified." — Haw- 
kins, 46-50. 

In fact, if we look seriously into the condition of 
Authorship at that period, we shall find that Johnson 25 
had undertaken one of the ruggedest of all possible 
enterprises; that here as elsewhere Fortune had given 
him unspeakable Contradictions to reconcile. For a 
man of Johnson's stamp, the Problem was twofold: 
First, not only as the humble but indispensable con- 30 
dition of all else, to keep himself, if so might be, alive; 
but secondly, to keep himself alive by speaking forth 
the Tnitli that Avas in hiin, and speaking it truly, that 
is, in thfe clearest and fittest utterance the Heavens 
had enabled him to give it, let the Earth say to this 



BO SWELL'S L^IFE OF JOLLNSON. 1 13 

what she liked. Of which twofold Problem if it be 
hard to solve either member separately, how incalcu- 
lably more so to solve it, when both are conjoined, and 
work with endless complication into one another! He 

5 that finds himself already kept alive can sometimes 
(unhappily not always) speak a little truth; he that 
finds himself able and willing, to all lengths, to speak 
lies, may, by watching how the wind sits, scrape 
together a livelihood, sometimes of great splendor: 

10 he, again, who finds himself provided with neither 
endowment, has but a ticklish game to play, and shall 
have praises if he win it. Let us look a little at 
both faces of the matter ; and see what front they 
then offered our Adventurer, what front he offered 

15 them. 

At the time of Johnson's appearance on the field, 
Literature, in many senses, was in a transitional 
state; chiefly in this sense, as respects the pecuniary 
subsistence of its cultivators. It was in the very act 

20 of passing from the protection of patrons into that of 
the Public; no longer to supply its necessities by 
laudatory Dedications to the Great, but by judicious 
Bargains with the Booksellers. This iiappy change 
has been much sung and celebrated ; many a "lord of 

25 the lion heart and eagle eye" looking back with scorn 
enough on the bygone system of Dependency: so that 
now it were perhaps well to consider, for a moment, 
what good might also be in it, what gratitude we owe 
it. That a good was in it, admits not of doubt. 

30 Whatsoever has existed has had its value: without 
some truth and worth lying in it, the thing could not 
have hung together, and been the organ and suste- 



114 CARLYLE OM 

nance and method of action for men that reasoned and 
were alive. Translate a Falsehood which is wholly 
false into Practice, the result comes out zero ; there 
is no fruit or issue to be derived from it. That in an 
age, when a Nobleman was still noble, still with his 5 
wealth the protector of worthy and humane things, 
and still venerated as such, a poor Man of Genius, his 
brother in nobleness, should, with unfeigned rev- 
erence, address him and say: "I have found Wisdom 
here, and would fain proclaim it abroad ; wilt thou, 10 
of thy abundance, afford me the means?" — in all this 
there was no baseness; it was wholly an honest pro- 
posal, which a free man might make, and a free man 
listen to. So might a Tasso, with a Gcrusalevime in 
his liand or in Iiis head, speak to a Duke of Ferrara ; 15 
so might a Shakspeare to his Southampton ; and 
Continental Artists generally to their rich Protec- 
tors, — in some countries, down almost to these days. 
It was only when the reverence became feigned, 
that baseness entered into the transaction on both 20 
sides; and, indeed, flourished there with rapid lux- 
uriance, till that became disgraceful for a Dryden 
which a Shakespeare could once practise without 
offence. 

Neither, it is very true, was the new way of Book- 25 
seller Maecenasship worthless ; which opened itself at 
this juncture, for the most important of all transport- 
trades, now when the old way had become too miry 
and im[)ossible. Remark, moreover, how this second 
sort of M?ecenasship, after carrying us through nearly 30 
a century of Literary Time, appears now to have well- 
nigh discharged its function also; and to be working 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOllXSOX. 1 15 

pretty rapidly toward some third method, the exact 
conditions of which are yet nowise visible. Thus all 
things have their end; and we should part with them 
all, not in anger, but in peace. The Bookseller 

5 System, during its peculiar century, the whole of the 
eighteenth, did carry us handsomely along; and many 
good Works it has left us, and many good Men it 
maintained: if it is now expiring by Puffery, as the 
Patronage System did by Flattery (for Lying is 

10 ever the forerunner of Death, nay, is itself Death), let 
us not forget its benefits; how it nursed Literature 
through boyhood and school-years, as Patronage had 
wrapped it in soft swaddling-bands; — till now we see 
it about to put on the toga virilis, could it but yf//^/ any 

15 such ! 

There is tolerable travelling on the beaten road, run 
how it may ; only on the new road not yet levelled 
and paved, and on the old road all broken into ruts 
and quagmires, is the travelling bad or impracticable. 

2o']'he difficulty lies always in the transition from one 
method to another. In which state it was that John- 
son now found Literature; and out of which, let us 
also say, he manfully carried it. What remarkable 
mortal first paid copyright in England we have not 

25 ascertained ; perhaps, for almost a century before, 
some scarce visible or ponderable pittance of wages 
had occasionally been yielded by the Seller of books to 
the Writer of them: the original Covenant, stipulating 
to produce Paradise Lost on the one hand, and Five 

2,0 Pounds Sterling on the other, still lies (we have been 
told) in black-on-white, for inspection and purchase 
by the curious, at a Bookshop in Chancery Lane. 



Ii6 CARLYLE ON 

Thus had tlie matter gone on, in a mixed confused 
way, for some threescore years ; — as ever, in such 
things, the old system overlaps the new, by some gen- 
eration or two, and only dies quite out when the new 
has got a complete organization and weather-worthy 5 
surface of its own. Among the first Authors, the very 
first of any significance, who lived by the day's wages 
of his craft, and composedly faced the world on that 
basis, was Samuel Johnson. 

At the time of Johnson's appearance there were still 10 
two ways on which an Author might attempt proceed- 
ing: there were the Maecenases proper in the West 
End of London ; and the Maecenases virtual of St. 
John's Gate and Paternoster Row. To a considerate 
man it might seem uncertain which method were the 15 
preferable: neither had very high attractions; the 
Patron's aid was now well-nigh necessarily polluted 
by sycophancy, before it could come to hand: the 
Bookseller's was deformed with greedy stupidity, 
not to say entire wooden-headedness and disgust (so 20 
that an Osborne even required to be knocked down 
by an Author of spirit), and could barely keep the 
thread of life together. The one was the wages of 
suffering and poverty; the other, unless you gave 
strict heed to it, the wages of sin. In time, Johnson 25 
had opportunity of looking into both methods, and 
ascertaining what they were; but found, at first trial, 
that the former would in nowise do for him. Listen, 
once again, to that far-famed Blast of Doom, pro- 
claiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield, and, 30 ' 
through him, of the listening world, that Patronage 
should be no more ! 



BOSPVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 117 

" Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your 
outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; during which 
time I have been pushing on my Worlv' through difficulties, of 
which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the 
5 verge of publication, without one act of assistance,* one word of 
encouragement, or one smile of favor. 

" The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and 
found him a native of the rocks. 

" Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a 
10 man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached 
ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have 
been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been 
kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot 
enjoy it ; till I am solitary and cannot impart it ; till I am known 
15 and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to 
confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be 
unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a 
patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 

" Having carried on my Work thus far with so little obligation 

20 to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I 

should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have long 

been awakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted 

myself with so much exaltation, 

" My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, most obedient 
25 servant, 

" Sam. Johnson." 

And thus must the rebellious "Sam. Johnson" turn 
him to the Bookselling guild, and the wondrous chaos 
of "Author by trade;" and, though ushered into it 
30 only by that dull oily Printer, "with loose horseman's 
coat and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore," 

' The English Dictionary. 

^ Were time and printer's space of no value, it were easy to 
wash away certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as " Notes ; " 
especially two : the one on this word and on Boswell's Note to it ; 



II 8 CARL VLB ON 

and only as subaltern to some commanding ofificer 
"Browne, sitting amid tobacco-smoke at the head of 
a long table in the alehouse at Clerkenwell," — gird 
himself together for the warfare ; having no alterna- 
tive! 5 

Little less contradictory was that other branch of 
the twofold Problem now set before Johnson: the 
speaking forth of Truth. Nay, taken by itself, it had 
in those days become so complex as to puzzle strongest 
heads, with nothing else imposed on them for solu- lo 
tion ; and even to turn high heads of that sort into 
mere hollow vizards, speaking neither truth nor false- 
hood, nor any thing but what the Prompter and Player 
(wTroKp^r?/?) put into them. Alas! for poor Johnson, 
Contradiction abounded; in spirituals and in tem- 15 
porals, within and without. Born with the strongest 
unconquerable love of just Insight, he must begin to 
live and learn in a scene where Prejudice flourishes 
with rank luxuriance. England was all confused 
enough, sightless and yet restless, take it where you 20 
would; but figure the best intellect in England nursed 
up to manhood in the idol-cavern of a poor Trades- 
man's house, in the cathedral city of Lichfield ! What 
is Truth? said jesting Pilate; What is Truth? might 
earnest Johnson much more emphatically say. Truth, 25 
no longer, like the Phoenix, in rainbow plumage, 
"poured, from her glittering beak, such tones of 

the other on the paragraph whicli follows. Let " Ed." look a 
second time ; he will find that Johnson's sacred regard for Tiulh 
is the only thing to be " noted ' in the former case ; also, in the 30 
latter, that this of " Love's being a native of the rocks" actually 
has a " meaning." 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 119 

sweetest melody as took captive every ear:" the 
Phoenix (waxing old) had well-nigh ceased her sing- 
ing, and empty wearisome Cuckoos, and doleful 
monotonous Owls, innumerable Jays also, and twitter- 

5 ing Sparrows on the housetops, pretended they were 
repeating her. 

It was wholly a divided age, that of Johnson ; Unity 
existed no where, in its Heaven, or in its Earth. 
Society, through every fibre, was rent asunder; all 

10 things, it was then becoming visible, but could not 
then be understood, were moving onwards, with an 
impulse received ages before, yet now first with a 
decisive rapidity, towards that great chaotic gulf, 
where, whether in the shape of French Revolutions, 

15 Reform Bills, or what shape soever, bloody or blood- 
less, the descent and engulfment assume, we now see 
them weltering and boiling. Already Cant, as once 
before hinted, had begun to play its wonderful part 
(for the hour was come): two ghastly apparitions, 

20 unreal siiiiidacra both, Hypocrisy and Atheism are 
already, in silence, parting the world. Opinion and 
Action, which should live together as wedded pair, 
"one flesh," more properly as Soul and Body, have 
commenced their open quarrel, and are suing for a 

25 separate maintenance, — as if they could exist sepa- 
rately. To the earnest mind, in any position, firm 
footing and a life of Truth was becoming daily more 
difficult: in Johnson's position it was more difficult 
than in almost any other. 

30 If, as for a devout nature was inevitable and indis- 
pensable, he looked up to Religion, as to the pole-star 
of his voyage, already there was no fixed pole-star 



120 CARLYLE ON 

any longer visible; but two stars, a whole constella- 
tion of stars, each proclaiming itself as the true. 
There was the red portentous comet-star of Infidelity; 
the dimmer-burning and dimmer fixed-star (uncertain 
now whether not an atmospheric meteor) of orthodoxy: 5 
which of these to choose? The keener intellects of 
Europe had, almost without exception, ranged them- 
selves under the former; for some half century, it had 
been the general effort of European Speculation to 
proclaim that Destruction of falsehood was the only 10 
Truth ; daily had Denial waxed stronger and stronger. 
Belief sunk more and more into decay. From our 
Bolingbrokes and Tolands the sceptical fever had 
passed into France, into Scotland; and already it 
smouldered, far and wide, secretly eating out the 15 
heart of England. Bayle had played his part ; Vol- 
taire, on a wider theatre, was playing his, — Johnson's 
senior by some fifteen years: Hume and Johnson 
were children almost of the same year. To this keener 
order of intellects did Johnson's indisputably belong; 20 
was he to join them; was he to oppose them? A 
complicated question: for, alas! the Church itself is 
no longer, even to him, wholly of true adamant, but 
of adamant and baked mud conjoined: the zealously 
Devout must find his Church tottering; and pause 25 
amazed to see, instead of inspired Priest, many a 
swine-feedlng Trulliber ministering at her altar. It 
is not the least curious of the incoherences which 
Johnson had to reconcile, that, though by nature 
contemptuous and incredulous, he was, at that time 30 
of day, to find his safety and glory in defending, with 
his whole might, the traditions of the elders. 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON: 12 1 

Not less perplexingly intricate, and on both sides 
hollow or questionable, was the aspect of Politics. 
Whigs struggling blindly forward, Tories holding 
blindly back ; each with some forecast of a half truth ; 

5 neither with any forecast of the whole! Admire here 
this other Contradiction in the life of Johnson; that, 
though the most ungovernable, and in practice the 
most independent of men, he must be a Jacobite, 
and worshipper of the Divine Right. In politics also 

10 there are Irreconcilables enough for hina. As indeed 
how could it be otherwise? For when religion is torn 
asunder, and the very heart of man's existence set 
against itself, then in all subordinate departments 
there must needs be hollowness, incoherence. The 

15 English Nation had rebelled against a Tyrant; and, 
by the hands of religious tyrannicides, exacted stern 
vengeance of him: Democracy had risen iron-sinewed, 
and, "like an infant Hercules, strangled serpents in 
its cradle." But as yet none knew the meaning or 

20 extent of the phenomenon: Europe was not ripe for 
it; not to be ripened for it but by the culture and 
various experience of another century and a half. 
And now, when the King-killers were all swept away, 
and a milder second picture was painted over the can- 

25 vass of \\\Q. first ^ and betitled "Glorious Revolution," 
who doubted but the catastrophe was over, the whole 
business finished, and Democracy gone to its long 
sleep? Yet was it like a business finished and not 
finished; a lingering uneasiness dwelt in all minds: 

30 the deep-lying, resistless Tendency, which had still to 
be obeyed^ could no longer be recognized ; thus was 
there half-ness, insincerity, uncertainty in men's ways; 



122 CARLYLE ON 

inst-ead of heroic Puritans and heroic Cavaliers, came 
now a dawdling set of argumentative Whigs, and a 
dawdling set of deaf-eared Tories; each half-foolish, 
each half-false. The Whigs were false and without 
basis; inasmuch as their whole object was Resistance, 5 
Criticism, Demolition, — they knew not why, or towards 
what issue. In VVhiggism, ever since a Charles and 
his Jeffries had ceased to meddle with it, and to have 
any Russel or Sidney to meddle with, there could be 
no divineness of character; nor till, in these latter 10 
days, it took the figure of a thorough-going, all-defy- 
ing Radicalism, was there any solid footing for it to 
stand on. Of the like uncertain, half-hollow nature 
had Toryism become, in Johnson's time; preaching 
forth indeed an everlasting truth, the duty of Loyalty; 15 
yet now (ever since the final expulsion of the Stuarts) 
having no Person^ but only an Office to be loyal to; 
no living Sotd to worship, but only a dead velvet- 
cushioned Chair. Its attitude, therefore, was stiff- 
necked refusal to move; as that of Whiggism was 20 
clamorous command to move, — let rhyme and reason, 
on both hands, say to it what they might. The con- 
sequence was : Immeasurable floods of contentious 
jargon, tending nowhither; false conviction; false 
resistance to conviction; decay (ultimately to become 25 
decease) of whatsoever was once understood by the 
words Principle or Honesty of heart; the louder triumph 
of IIalf-Xit?,s and Plausibility over IV/w/e-ness and 
Truth; — at last, this all-overshadowing efflorescence 
of Quackery, which we now see, with all its deaden- 30 
ing and killing fruits, in all its innumerable branches, 
down to the lowest. How, between these jarring 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 123 

extremes, wherein the rotten lay so inextricably inter- 
mingled with the sound, and as yet no eye could see 
through the ulterior meaning of the matter, was a 
faithful and true man to adjust himself? 

5 That Johnson, in spite of all drawbacks, adopted 
the Conservative side; stationed himself as the unyield- 
ing opponent of Innovation, resolute to hold fast the 
form of sound words, could not but increase, in no 
small measure, the difficulties he had to strive with. 

10 We mean the moral difficulties; for in economical 
respects, it might be pretty equally balanced; the 
Tory servants of the Public had perhaps about the 
same chance of promotion as the Whig: and all the 
promotion Johnson aimed at was the privilege to live. 

15 But, for what, though unavowed, was no less indis- 
pensable, for his peace of conscience, and the clear 
ascertainment and feeling of his Duty as an inhabitant 
of God's world, the case was hereby rendered much 
more complex. To resist Innovation is easy enough 

20 on one condition: that you resist Inquiry. This is, 
and was, the common expedient of your common 
Conservatives; but it would not do for Johnson: he 
was a zealous recommender and practiser of Inquiry; 
once for all, could not and would not believe, much 

25 less speak and act, a Falsehood: the /^r;« of sound 
words, which he held fast, must have a meaning in it. 
Here lay the difficulty: to behold a portentous mix- 
ture of True and False, and feel that he must dwell 
and fight there ; yet to love and defend only the True. 

30 How worship, when you cannot and will not be an 
idolater ; yet cannot help discerning that the Symbol 
of your Divinity has half become idolatrous? This 



124 CARLYLE ON 

was tlie question, which Johnson, the man both of cleai 
eye and devout believing heart, must answer, — at peril 
of his Hfe. The Whig or Sceptic, on the other hand, 
had a much simpler part to play. To him only the 
idolatrous side of things, nowise the divine one, lay , 
visible : not worsJiip, therefore, nay in the strict sense 
not heart-honesty, only at most lip- and hand-honesty, 
is required of him. What spiritual force is his, he 
can conscientiously employ in the work of cavilling, 
of pulling down what is False. For the rest, that lo 
there is or can be any Truth of a higher than sensual 
nature, has not occurred to liim. The utmost, there- 
fore, that he as man has to aim at, is Respectability, 
the suffrages of his fellow-men. Such suffrages he 
may weigh as well as count; or count only: accordingly 
as he is a Burke, or a Wilkes. But beyond these 
there lies nothing divine for him; these attained, all 
is attained. Thus is his whole world distinct and 
rounded in; a clear goal is set before him; a firm 
path, rougher or smoother; at worst a firm region 20 
wherein to seek a path: let him gird up his loins, and 
travel on without misgivings! For the honest Con- 
servative, again, nothing is distinct, nothing rounded 
in: Respectability can nowise be his highest 
Godhead; not one aim, but two conflicting aims to 25 
be continually reconciled by him, has he to strive 
after. A difficult position, as we said; which accord- 
ingly the most did, even in those days, but half 
defend, — by the surrender, namely, of their own too 
cumbersome honesty, or even understanding ; after 30 
which the completest defence was worth little. Into 
this difficult position Johnson, nevertheless, threw 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOfLlVSOJV. I25 

himself: found it indeed full of difficulties; yet held 
it out manfully as an honest-hearted, open-sighted 
man, while life was in him. 

Such was that same "twofold Problem" set before 

5 Samuel Johnson. Consider all these moral difficul- 
ties; and add to them the fearful aggravation, which 
lay in that other circumstance, that he needed a con- 
tinual appeal to the Public, must continually produce 
a certain impression and conviction on the Public; 

10 that if he did not, he ceased to have "provision for 
the day that was passing over him," he could not any 
longer live ! How a vulgar character once launched 
into this wild element; driven onwards by Fear and 
Famine; without other aim than to clutch what Prov- 

15 ender (of Enjoyment in any kind) he could get, always 
if possible keeping ^///V^ clear of the Gallows and Pillory 
(that is to say, minding heedfully both "person" and 
"character"), — would have floated hither and thither 
in it; and contrived to eat some three repasts daily, 

20 and wear some three suits yearly, and then to depart 
and disappear, having consumed his last ration : all 
this might be worth knowing, but were in itself a 
trivial knowledge. How a noble man, resolute for 
the Truth, to whom Shams and Lies were once for all 

25 an abomination, — was to act in it: /lere lay the mys- 
tery. By what methods, by what gifts of eye and 
hand, does a heroic Samuel Johnson, now when cast 
forth into that waste Chaos of Authorship, maddest of 
things, a mingled Phlegethon and Fleet-ditch, with its 

30 floating lumber, and sea-krakens, and mud-spectres, — 
shape himself a voyage; of the transient driftwood, 
and the enduring iron, build him a seaworthy Life- 



126 CARLYLE ON 

boat, and sail therein, iindrowned, unpolluted, through 
the roaring "mother of dead dogs," onwards to an 
eternal Landmark, and City that hath foundations? 
This high question is even the one answered in Bos- 
well's Book; which Book we therefore, not so falsely, 5 
have named a Heroic Poem ; for in it there lies the 
whole argument of such. Glory to our brave Samuel! 
He accomplished this wonderful Problem ; and now 
through long generations we point to him, and say: 
Here also was a Man; let the world once more have 10 
assurance of a Man! 

Had there been in Johnson, now when afloat on 
that confusion worse confounded of grandeur and 
squalor, no light but an earthly outward one, he too 
must have made shipwreck. With his diseased body, 15 
and vehement voracious heart, how easy for him to 
become a carpe-diein Philosopher, like the rest, and 
live and die as miserably as any Boyce of that Brother- 
hood! But happily there was a higher light for him; 
shining as a lamp to his path; which, in all paths, 20 
would teach him to act and walk not as a fool, but 
as wise, and in those evil days also, "redeeming the 
time." Under dimmer or clearer manifestations, a 
Truth had been revealed to him: I also am a Man; 
even in this unutterable element of Authorship, I may 25 
live as beseems a Man! That Wrong is not only 
different from Right, but that it is in strict scientific 
terms infinitely different ; even as the gaining of the 
whole world set against the losing of one's own soul, 
or (as Johnson had it) a Heaven set against a Hell ; 30 
that in all situations (out of the Pit of Tophet), wherein 
a living Man has stood or can stand, there is actually 



BOS WELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 127 

a Prize of quite infinite value placed within his reach, 

' namely, a Duty for him to do: this highest Gospel, 
which forms the basis and worth of all other Gospels 
whatsoever, had been revealed to Samuel Johnson ; 

5 and the man had believed it, and laid it faithfully to 
heart. Such knowledge of the transcendental^ im- 
measurable character of Duty we call the basis of all 
Gospels, the essence of all Religion: he who with his 
whole soul knows not this as yet knows nothing, as 

10 yet is properly nothing. 

This, happily for him, Johnson was one of those 
that knew; under a certain authentic Symbol it stood 
forever present to his eyes: a Symbol, indeed, waxing 
old as doth a garment; yet which had guided forward 

15 as their Banner and celestial Pillar of Fire, innumer- 
able saints and witnesses, the fathers of our modern 
world; and for him also had still a sacred significance. 
It does not appear that at any time Johnson was what 
we call irreligious : but in his sorrows and isolation, 

20 when hope died away, and only a long vista of suffer- 
ing and toil lay before him to the end, then first did 
Religion shine forth in its meek, everlasting clearness ; 
even as the stars do in black night, which in the day- 
time and dusk were hidden by inferior lights. How 

25 a true man, in the midst of errors and uncertainties, 
shall work out for himself a sure Life-truth ; and 
adjusting the transient to the eternal, amid the frag- 
ments of ruined Temples build up, with toil and pain, 
a little Altar for himself, and worship there; how 

30 Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, can purify 
and fortify his soul, and hold real communion with 
the Highest, "in the Church of St. Clement Danes:" 



128 CARLYLE ON' 

this too stands all unfolded in his Biography, and is 
among the most touching and memorable things there; 
a thing to be looked at with pity, admiration, awe. 
Johnson's Religion was as the light of life to him; 
without it his heart was all sick, dark, and had no 5 
guidance left. 

He is now enlisted, or impressed, into that unspeak- 
able shoeblack-seraph Army of Authors; but can feel 
hereby that he fights under a celestial flag, and will 
quit him like a man. The first grand requisite, an 
assured heart, he therefore has: what his outward 10 
equipments, and accoutrements are, is the next ques- 
tion ; an important, though inferior one. His intel- 
lectual stock, intrinsically viewed, is perhaps incon- 
siderable: the furnishings of an English School and 
English University; good knowledge of the Latin 15 
tongue, a more uncertain one of Greek: tliis is a 
rather slender stock of Education wherewith to front 
the world. But then it is to be remembered that 
his world was England; that such was the culture 
England commonly supplied and expected. Besides 20 
Johnson has been a voracious reader, though a desul- 
tory one, and oftenest in strange scholastic, too obso- 
lete Libraries; he has also rubbed shoulders with the 
press of actual Life, for some thirty years now: views 
or hallucinations of innumerable things are weltering 25 
to and fro in him. Above all, be his weapons what 
they may, he has an arm that can wield them. 
Nature has given him her choicest gift: an open eye 
and heart. He will look on the world, wheresoever he 
can catch a glimpse of it, with eager curiosity: to the 30 
last, we find this a striking characteristic of him; for 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSOM. 129 

all human interests he has a sense; the meanest handi- 
craftsman could interest him, even in extreme age, 
by speaking of his craft: the ways of men are all 
interesting to him; any human thing that he did not 

5 know he wished to know. Reflection, moreover, 
Meditation, was what he practised incessantly with 
or without his will: for the mind of the man was 
earnest, deep as well as humane. Thus would the 
world, such fragments of it as he could survey, form 

10 itself, or continually tend to form itself, into a coher- 
ent whole; on any and on all phases of which his vote 
and voice must be well worth listening to. As a 
Speaker of the Word, he will speak real words; no 
idle jargon or hollow triviality will issue from him. 

15 His aim, too, is clear, attainable, that of working for 
his wages : let him do this honestly, and all else will 
follow of its own accord. 

With such omens, into such a warfare, did Johnson 
go forth. A rugged, hungry Kerne, or Gallowglass, as 

20 we called him: yet indomitable; in whom lay the true 
spirit of a Soldier. With giant's force he toils, since 
such is his appointment, were it but at hewing of wood 
and drawing of water for old sedentary bushy-wigged 
Cave; distinguishes himself by mere quantity, if 

25 there is to be no other distinction. He can write all 
things; frosty Latin verses, if these are the salable 
commodity; Book-prefaces, Political Philippics, Re- 
view Articles, Parliamentary Debates: all things he 
does rapidly; still more surprising, all things he does 

30 thoroughly and well. How he sits there, in his rough- 
hewn, amorphous bulk, in that upper-room at St. 
John's Gate, and trundles off sheet after sheet of those 



I30 CARLYLE ON 

Senate-of-Lilliput Debates, to the clamorous Printer's 
Devils waiting for them, with insatiable throat, down- 
stairs; himself perhaps impransus all the while! 
Admire also the greatness of Literature; how a grain 
of mustard-seed cast into its Nile-waters, shall settle 5 
in the teeming mould, and be found, one day, as a 
Tree, in whose branches all the fowls of heaven may 
lodge. Was it not so with these Lilliput Debates? In 
that small project and act began the stupendous 
Fourth Estate; whose wide world-embracing in- ic 
fluences what eye can take in; in whose boughs are 
there not already fowls of strange feather lodged? 
Such things, and far stranger, were done in that won- 
drous old Portal, even in latter times. And then 
figure Samuel dining "behind the screen," from a 15 
trencher covertly handed in to him, at a preconcerted 
nod from the "great bushy wig;" Samuel too ragged 
to show face, yet "made a happy man of" by hearing 
his praise spoken. If to Johnson himself, then much 
more to us, may that St. John's Gate be a place we 20 
can "never pass without veneration." ' 

' All Johnson's places of resort and abode are venerable, and 
now indeed to the many as well as to the few ; for his name has 
become great ; and, as we must often with a kind of sad admira- 
tion recognize, there is, even to the rudest man, no greatness so 25 
venerable as intellectual, as spiritual greatness ; flay, properly 
there is no other venerable at all. For example, what soul-sub- 
duing magic, for the very clown or craftsman of our England, 
lies in the word " Scholar "! " He is a Scholar : " he is a man 
wiser than we ; of a wisdom to us boundless, infinite : who shall 3c 
speak his worth ! Such things, we say, fill us with a certain 
pathetic admiration of defaced and obstructed yet glorious man ; 
archangel though in ruins, — or, rather, though in rubbish, of 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSONT. 131 

Poverty, Distress, and as yet Obscurity, are his com- 
panions; so poor is he that his Wife must leave him, 
and seek shelter among other relations; Johnson's 
household has accommodation for one inmate only. 

5 To all his ever-varying, ever-recurring troubles, more- 
encumbrances and mud-incrustations, which also are not to be 
perpetual. 

Nevertheless, in this mad-whirling, all-forgetting London, the 
haunts of the mighty that were can seldom without a strange diffi- 

10 culty be discovered. Will any man, for instance, tell us which 
bricks it was in Lincoln's Inn Buildings, that Ben Jonson's hand 
and trowel laid ? No man, it is to be feared, — and also grumbled 
at. With Samuel Johnson may it prove otherwise ! A Gentle- 
man of the British Museum is said to have made drawings of all 

15 his residences : the blessing of Old Mortality be upon him ! We 
ourselves, not without labor and risk, lately discovered GoUGH 
Square, between Fleet Street and Holborn (adjoining both to 
Bolt Court and to Johnson's Court) ; and on the second day 
of search, the very House there, wherein the English Dictionary 

20 was composed. It is the first or corner house on the right hand, 
as you enter through the arched way from the North-west. The 
actual occujiant, an elderly, well-washed, decent-looking man, 
invited us to enter ; and courteously undertook to be cicerone ; 
though in his memory lay nothing but the foolishest jumble and 

25 hallucination. It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house : 
" I have spent many a pound and penny on it since then," said 
the worthy landlord ; ' ' here, you see, this Bedroom was the 
Doctor's study ; that was the garden " (a plot of delved ground 
somewhat larger than a bed-quilt), " where he walked for exer- 

30 cise ; these three Garret Bedrooms " (where his three copyists sat 
and wrote) " were the place he kept his — Pupils in "! Tempiis 
edax rerum ! Yet ferax also : for our friend now added, with a 
wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical : " I let it all 
in Lodgings, to respectable gentlemen ; by the quarter, or the 

35 month ; it's all one to me." — " To me also," whispered the ghost 
of Samae., as we went pensively our ways. 



132 CAkLYLE ON 

over, must be added this continual one of ill health, 
and its concomitant depressiveness: a galling load, 
which would have crushed most common mortals into 
desperation, is his appointed ballast and life-burden; 
he "could not remember the day he had passed free 5 
from pain." Nevertheless, Life, as we said before, 
is always Life: a healthy soul, imprison it as you will, 
in squalid garrets, shabby coat, bodily sickness, or 
whatever else, will assert its heaven-granted indefeas- 
ible Freedom, its right to conquer difficulties, to do 10 
work, even to feel gladness. Johnson does not whine 
over his existence, but manfully makes the most and 
best of it. "He said, a man might live in a garret 
at eighteenpence a-week: few people would inquire 
where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 15 
'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending 
threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some 
hours every day in very good company; he might dine 
for sixpence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a penny, 
and do without supper. On cleaii-sJiirt day he went 20 
abroad and paid visits." Think by whom and of 
whom this was uttered, and ask then. Whether there 
is more pathos in it than in a whole circulating-library 
of Giaours and Harolds, or less pathos? On another 
occasion, "when Dr. Johnson, one day, read his own 25 
Satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, with 
the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune 
and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears: Mr. 
Thrale's family and Mr. Scott only were present, who, 
in a jocose way, clapped him on the back, and said, 30 
'What's all this, my dear sir? Why, you and I and 
Hercules, you know, were all troubled with Jiiclaii- 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 133 

choly.' He was a very large man, and made out the 
triumvirate with Johnson and Hercules comically 
enough." These were sweet tears ; the sweet victor- 
ious remembrance lay in them of toils indeed fright- 

5 ful, yet never flinched from, and now triumphed over. 
'"One day it shall delight you to remember labor 
done ! " — Neither, though Johnson is obscure and poor, 
need the highest enjoyment of existence, that of heart 
freely communing with heart, be denied him. Savage 

10 and he wander homeless through the streets; without 
bed, yet not without friendly converse; such another 
conversation not, it is like, producible in the proudest 
drawing-room of London. Nor, under the void Night, 
upon the hard pavement, are their own woes the only 

15 topic: nowise; they "will stand by their country," 
they there, the two "Back-woods-men" of the Brick 
Desert! 

Of all outward evils Obscurity is perhaps in itself 
the least. To Johnson, as to a healthy-minded man, 

20 the fantastic article, sold or given under the title of 
Fame, had little or no value but its intrinsic one. He 
prized it as the means of getting him employment and 
good wages ; scarcely as any thing more. His light 
and guidance came from a loftier source ; of which, in 

25 honest aversion to all hypocrisy or pretentious talk, 
he spoke not to men ; nay perhaps, being of a healthy 
mind, had never spoken to himself. We reckon it a 
striking fact in Johnson's history, this carelessness of 
his to Fame. Most authors speak of their "Fame" 

30 as if it were a quite priceless matter; the grand ulti- 
matum, and heavenly Constantine's-banner they had 
to follow, and conquer under.— Thy "Fame!" Un- 



134 CARLYLE ON 

happy mortal, where will it and thou both be in some 
fifty years? Shakespeare himself has lasted but two 
hundred ; Homer (partly by accident) three thousand : 
and does not already an Eternity encircle every Ale 
and every Thee 2 Cease, then, to sit feverishly hatch- 5 
ing on that "Fame" of thine ; and flapping and shriek- 
ing with fierce hisses, like brood-goose on her last 
egg, if man shall or dare approach it! Quarrel not 
with me, hate me not, my brother: make what thou 
canst of thy egg, and welcome: God knows, I will not 10 
steal it; I believe it to be addle. — Johnson, for his 
part, was no man to be "killed by a review"; con- 
cerning which matter, it was said by a benevolent 
person: "If any author can be reviewed to death, let 
it be, with all convenient despatch, do/ie." Johnson 15 
thankfully receives any word spoken in his favor; is 
nowise disobliged by a lampoon, but will look at it, if 
pointed out to him, and show how it might have been 
done better: the lampoon itself is indeed noihing, a 
soap-bubble that next moment will become a drop of 20 
sour suds; but in the meanwhile, if it do anything, it 
keeps him more in the world's eye, and the next 
bargain will be all the richer: "Sir, if they should 
cease to talk of me, I must starve." Sound heart 
and understanding head: these fail no man, not even 25 
a Man of Letters! 

Obscurity, however, was, in Johnson's case, 
whether a light or heavy evil, likely to be no lasting 
one. He is animated by the spirit of a true workman, 
resolute to do his work well; and he does his work 30 
well; all his work, that of writing, that of living. A 
man of this stamp is unhappily not so common in the 



BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 135 

literary or in any other department of the world, that 
he can continue always unnoticed. By slow degrees, 
Johnson emerges; looming, at first, huge and 'dim in 
the eye of an observant few; at last disclosed, in his 

5 real proportions, to the eye of the whole world, and 
encircled with a "light-nimbus" of glory, so that 
whoso is not blind must and shall behold him. By 
slow degrees, we said ; for this also is notable ; slow 
but sure: as his fame waxes not by exaggerated clamor 

10 of what he seems to be, but by better and better insight 
of what he /V, so it will last and stand wearing, being 
genuine. Thus indeed is it always, or nearly always, 
with true fame. The heavenly Luminary rises amid 
vapors ; star-gazers enough must scan it with critical 

15 telescopes; it makes no blazing, the world can either 
look at it, or forbear looking at it ; not till after a 
time and times does its celestial eternal nature become 
indubitable. Pleasant, on the other hand, is the blaz- 
ing of a Tar-barrel ; the crowd dance merrily round 

20 it, with loud huzzaing, universal three-times-three, 
and, like Homer's peasants, "bless the useful light:" 
but unhappily it so soon ends in darkness, foul chok- 
ing smoke; and is kicked into the gutters, a name- 
less imbroglio of charred staves, pitch-cinders, and 

25 vomisseme/it du diable ! 

But indeed, from of old, Johnson has enjoyed all, 
or nearly all, that Fame can yield any man: the respect, 
the obedience of those that are about him and inferior 
to him ; of those whose opinion alone can have any 

30 forcible impression on him. A little circle gathers 
round the Wise man ; which gradually enlarges as the 
report thereof spreads, and more can come to see, and 



136 CARLYLE ON 

believe; for Wisdom is precious, and of irresistible 
attraction to all. "An inspired -idiot," Goldsmith, 
hangs 'strangely about him; though, as Hawkins says, 
"he loved not Jolmson, but rather envied him for 
his parts; and once entreated a friend to desist from 5 
praising him, 'for in doing so,' said he, 'you harrow up 
my very soul!' " Yet, on the whole, there is no evil 
in the "gooseberry-fool ;" but rather much good ; of a 
finer, if of a weaker, sort than Johnson's; and all the 
more genuine that he himself could never become con- 10 
scions of it, — though unhappily never cease attempting 
to become so: the author of the genuine Vicar of 
Wakefield^ nill he, will he, must needs fly towards 
such a mass of genuine Manhood ; and Dr. Minor 
keep gyrating round Dr. Major, alternately attracted 15 
and repelled. Then there is the chivalrous Topham 
Beauclerk, with his sharp wit, and gallant courtly 
ways: there is Bennet Langton, an orthodox gentle- 
man, and worthy; though Johnson once laughed, 
louder almost than mortal, at his last will and testa- 20 
ment; and "could not stop his merriment, but con- 
tinued it all the way till he got without the Temple- 
gate ; then burst into such a fit of laughter that he 
appeared to be almost in a convulsion ; and, in order 
to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at 25 
the side of the foot-pavement, and sent forth peals so 
loud that, in the silence of the night, his voice seemed 
to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet-ditch!" Lastly 
comes his solid-thinking, solid-feeding Thrale, the 
well-beloved man; with Thralia, a bright papilionace- 30 
ous creature, whom the elephant loved to play with, 
and wave to and fro upon his trunk, Not to speak 



BOSWELL'S LIFS. OF JOHNSON. I37 

of a reverent Bozzy, for what need is there farther? — 
Or of the spiritual Luminaries, with tongue or pen, 
who made that age remarkable; or of Highland Lairds 
drinking, in fierce usquebaugh, "Your health, Toctor 

5 Shonson ! " — still less of many such as that poor "Mr. 
F. Lewis," older in date, of whose birth, death, and 
whole terrestrial res geshe, this only, and strange 
enough this actually, survives: "Sir, he lived in Lon- 
don and hung loose upon society ! " Stat Parvi nominis 

lo umbra. — 

In his fifty-third year he is beneficed, by the royal 
bounty, with a Pension of three hundred pounds. 
Loud clamor is always more or less insane: but prob- 
ably the in sanest of all loud clamors in the eighteenth 

15 century was this that was raised about Johnson's Pen- 
sion. Men seem to be led by the noses; but, in 
reality, it is by the ears, — ^as some ancient slaves w^ere, 
who had their ears bored ; or as some modern quad- 
rupeds may be, whose ears are long. Very falsely 

20 was it said, "Names do not change Things;" Names 
do change Things; nay, for most part they are the 
only substance which mankind can discern in Things. 
The whole sum that Johnson, during the remaining 
twenty years of his life, drew from the public funds of 

25 England, would have supported some Supreme Priest 
for about half as many weeks ; it amounts very nearly 
to the revenue of our poorest Church-Overseer for one 
twelvemonth. Of secular Administrators of Prov- 
inces, and Horse-subduers, and Game-destroyers, we 

30 shall not so much as speak: but who were the Pri- 
mates of England, and the Primates of all England, 
during Johnson's days? No man has remembered. 



138 CARLYLE ON 

Again, is the Primate of all England something, or is 
he nothing? If something, then what but the man 
who, in the supreme degree, teaches and spiritually 
edifies, and leads towards Heaven by guiding wisely 
through the Earth, the living souls that inhabit Eng- 5 
land? We touch here upon deep matters; which but 
remotely concern us, and might lead us into still 
deeper: clear, in the meanwhile, it is that the true 
Spiritual Edifier and Soul's-Father of all England 
was, and till very lately continued to be, the man 10 
named Samuel Johnson, — whom this scot-and-lot-jiay- 
ing world cackled reproachfully to see remunerated 
like a Supervisor of Excise ! 

If Destiny had beaten hard on poor Samuel, and 
did never cease to visit him too roughly, yet the last 15 
section of his Life might be pronounced victorious, 
and on the whole happy. He was not idle; but now 
no longer goaded on by want; the light which had 
shone irradiating the dark haunts of Poverty now 
illuminates the circles of Wealth, of a certain culture 20 
and elegant intelligence; he who had once been 
admitted to speak with Edmund Cave and Tobacco 
Browne, now admits a Reynolds and a Burke to speak 
Avith him. Loving friends are there; Listeners, even 
Answerers: the fruit of his long labors lies round him 25 
in fair legible Writings, of Philosophy, Eloquence, 
Morality, Philology; some excellent, all worthy and 
genuine Works; for which, too, a deep, earnest 
murmur of thanks reaches him from all ends of his 
Fatherland. Nay, there are works of Goodness, of 30 
undying Mercy, which even he has possessed the 
power to do: "What I gave I have; what I spent 1 



BOSWELIJS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 139 

had!" Early friends had long sunk into the grave; 
yet in his soul they ever lived, fresh and clear, with 
soft pious breathings towards them, not without a still 
hope of one day meeting them again in purer union. 

5 Such was Johnson's Life: the victorious Battle of a 
free, true Man. Finally he died the death of the free 
and true: a dark cloud of death, solemn and not 
untinged with haloes of immortal Hope, "took him 
away," and our eyes could no longer behold him; 

10 but can still behold the trace and impress of his 
courageous honest spirit, deep-legible in the World's 
Business, wheresoever he walked and was. 

To estimate the quantity of Work that Johnson per- 
formed, how much poorer the World were had it 

15 wanted him, can, as in all such cases, never be accur- 
ately done ; cannot, till after some longer space, be 
approximately done. All work is as seed sown; it 
grows and spreads, and sows itself anew, and so, in 
endless palingenesia, lives and works. To Johnson's 

20 Writings, good and solid, and still profitable as they 
are, we have already rated his Life and Conversation 
as superior. By the one and by the other, who shall 
compute what effects have been produced, and are 
still, and into deep Time, producing? 

25 So much, however, Ave can already see: It is now 
some three quarters of a century that Johnson has 
been the Prophet of the English ; the man by whose 
light (.he English people, in public and in private, more 
than by any other man's, have guided their existence. 

30 Higher light than that immediately practical one; 
higher virtue than an honest Prudence, he could 



I40 CARLYLE ON 

not then communicate; nor perhaps could they have 
received: such light, such virtue, however, he did 
communicate. How to thread this labyrinthic Time, 
the fallen and falling Ruin of Times; to silence vain 
Scruples, hold firm to the last the fragments of old 5 
Belief, and with earnest eye still discern some glimpses 
of a true path, and go forward thereon, "in a world 
where there is much to be done, and little to be 
known:" this is what Samuel Johnson, by act and 
word, taught his nation; what his nation received and 10 
learned of him, more than of any other. We can view 
him as the preserver and transmitter of whatsoever 
was genuine in the spirit of Toryism; which genuine 
spirit, it is now becoming manifest, must again embody 
itself in all new forms of Society, be what they may, 15 
that are to exist, and liave continuance — elsewhere 
than on Paper. The last in many things, Johnson 
was the last genuine Tory ; the last of Englishmen 
who, with strong voice and wholly-believing heart, 
preached the Doctrine of Standing-still; who, without 20 
selfishness or slavishness, reverenced the existing 
Powers, and could assert the privileges of rank, though 
himself poor, neglected, and plebeian; who had heart- 
devoutness with heart-hatred of cant, was orthodox- 
religious with his eyes open ; and in all things and 25 
everywhere spoke out in plain English, from a soul 
wherein Jesuitism could find no harbor, and with the 
front and tone not of a diplomatist but of a man. 

The last of the Tories was Johnson: not Burke, as 
is often said ; Burke was essentially a Whig, and only 30 
on reaching the verge of the chasm towards which 
Whiggism from the first was inevitably leading, re- 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 141 

coiled; and, like a man vehement rather than earnest, 
a resplendent far-sighted Rhetorician rather than a 
deep, sure Thinker, recoiled with no measure, con- 
vulsively, and damaging what he drove back with 

5 him. 

In a world which exists by the balance of Antagon- 
isms the respective merit of the Conservator and 
the Innovator must ever remain debatable. Great, in 
the meanwhile, and undoubted for both sides, is the 

10 merit of him who, in a day of Change, walks wisely, 
honestly. Johnson's aim was in itself an impossible 
one: this of stemming the eternal Flood of Time; 
of clutching all things and anchoring them down, and 
saying. Move not! — how could it, or should it, ever 

15 have success? The strongest man can but retard the 
current partially and for a short hour. Yet even in 
such shortest retardation, may not an inestimable value 
lie? If England has escaped the blood-bath of a 
French Revolution ; and may yet, in virtue of this 

20 delay and of the experience it has given, work out her 
deliverance calmly into a new Era, let Samuel John- 
son, beyond all contemporary or succeeding men, have 
the praise for it. We said above that he was appointed 
to be Ruler of the British nation for a season: whoso 

25 will look beyond the surface, into the heart of the 
world's movements, may find that all Pitt Administra- 
tions, and Continental Subsidies, and Waterloo vic- 
tories rested on the possibility of making England, 
yet a little while, Toryis/i^ Loyal to the Old ; and 

30 this again on the anterior reality, that the Wise had 
found such Loyalty still practicable, and recommend- 
able. England had its Hume, as France had its Vol- 



142 CARLYLE ON 

taires and Diderots ; but the Johnson was peculiar 
to us. 

If we ask now, by what endowment it mainly was 
that Johnson realized such a Life for himself and 
others ; what quality of character the main phenomena 5 
of his Life may be most naturally deduced from, and 
his other qualities most naturally subordinated to in 
our conception of him, perhaps the answer were: The 
quality of Courage, of Valor; that Johnson was a 
Brave Man. The Courage that can go forth, once 10 
and away, to Chalk-Farm, and have itself shot, and 
snuffed out, with decency, is nowise wholly what we 
mean here. Such Courage we indeed esteem an 
exceeding small matter; capable of coexisting with a 
life full of falsehood, feebleness, poltroonery, and 15 
despicability. Nay oftener it is Cowardice rather 
that produces the result: for consider. Is the Chalk- 
Farm Pistoleer inspired with any reasonable Belief 
and Determination; or is he hounded on by haggard 
indefinable Fear, — how he will be cut at public 20 
places, and "plucked geese of the neighborhood" 
will wag their tongues at him a plucked goose? If 
he go then, and be shot without shrieking or audible 
uproar, it is well for him : nevertheless tliere is nothing 
amazing in it. Courage to manage all this has not 25 
perhaps been denied to any man, or to any woman. 
Thus, do not recruiting sergeants drum through the 
streets of manufacturing towns, and collect ragged 
losels enough; every one of whom, if once dressed in 
red, and trained a little, will receive fire cheerfully 30 
for the small sum of one shilling/)?;' diein^ and have 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 143 

the soul blown out of him at last, with perfect pro- 
priety. The Courage that dares only die is on the 
whole no sublime affair; necessary indeed, yet uni- 
versal; pitiful when it begins to parade itself. On 

5 this Globe of ours there are some thirty-six persons 
that manifest it, seldom with the smallest failure, 
during every second of time. Nay, look at Newgate: 
do not the offscourings of Creation, when condemned 
to the gallows, as if they were not men but vermin, 

lowalk thither with decency, and even to the scowls 
and hootings of the whole Universe, give their stern 
good-night in silence? What is to be undergone only 
once, we may undergo; what must be, comes almost 
of its own accord. Considered as Duellist, what a 

15 poor figure does the fiercest Irish Whiskerando make 
compared with any English Game-cock, such as you 
may buy for fifteen -pence ! 

The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage 
to die decently, but to live manfully. This, when 

20 by God's grace it has been given, lies deep in the 
soul; like genial heat, fosters all other virtues and 
gifts ; without it they could not live. In spite of our 
innumerable Waterloos and Peterloos, and such cam- 
paigning as there has been, this Courage we allude to 

25 and call the only true one, is perhaps rarer in these 
last ages than it has been in any other since the Saxon 
Invasion under Hengist. Altogether extinct it can 
never be among men; otherwise the species Man were 
no longer for this world: here and there, in all times, 

30 under various guises, men are sent hither not only to 
demonstrate but exhibit it, and testify, as from heart 
to heart, that it is still possible, still practicable. 



144 CARLYLE ON' 

Johnson, in the eighteenth century, and as Man of 
Letters, was one of such; and, in good truth, "the 
bravest of the brave." What mortal could have more 
to war with? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered 
not; he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, 5 
prevailed. Whoso will understand what it is to have 
a man's heart may find that, since the time of John 
Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English 
bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore. Observe, too, 
that he never called himself brave, never felt himself 10 
to be so; the more completely was so. No Giant 
Despair, no Golgotha-Death-dance or Sorcerer's-Sab- 
bath of "Literary Life in London," appals this pil- 
grim; he works resolutely for deliverance; in still 
defiance steps stoutly along. The thing that is given 15 
him to do, he can make himself do; what is to be 
endured, he can endure in silence. 

How the great soul of old Samuel, consuming daily 
his own bitter unalleviable allotment of misery and 
toil, shows beside the poor flimsy little soul of young 20 
Boswell; one day flaunting in the ring of vanity, tarry- 
ing by the wine-cup and crying. Aha, the wine is red; 
the next day deploring his down -pressed, night- 
shaded, quite poor estate, and thinking it unkind that 
the whole movement of the Universe should go on, 25 
while /lis digestive-apparatus had stopped ! We reckon 
Johnson's "talent of silence" to be among his great 
and too rare gifts. Where there is nothing farther to 
be done, there shall nothing farther be said: like his 
own poor blind Welshwoman, he accomplished some- 30 
what, and also "endured fifty years of wretchedness 
with unshaken fortitude." Hov; grim was Life to 



BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON: 145 

him; a sick Prison-house and Doubting-castle! "His 
great business," he would profess, "was to escape 
from himself." Yet towards all this he has taken his 
position and resolution; can dismiss it all "with frigid 
5 indifference, having little to hope or to fear." 
Friends are stupid, and pusillanimous, and parsimo- 
nious; "wearied of his stay, yet offended at his depar- 
ture:" it is the manner of the world. "By popular 
delusion," remarks he with a gigantic calmness, "init- 
io erate writers will rise into renown:" it is portion of 
the History of English literature; a perennial thing, 
this same popular delusion; and will — alter the char- 
acter of the Language. 

Closely connected with this quality of Valor, partly 
15 as springing from it, partly as protected by it, are the 
more recognizable qualities of Truthfulness in word 
and thought, and Honesty in action. There is a 
reciprocity of influence here : for as the realising of 
Truthfulness and Honesty is the Life-light and great 
20 aim of Valor, so without Valor they cannot, in any- 
wise, be realised. Now, in spite of all practical short- 
comings, no one that sees into the significance of 
Johnson will say that his prime object was not Truth. 
In conversation, doubtless, you may observe him, on 
25 occasion, fighting as if for victory ; — and must pardon 
these ebulliences of a careless hour, which were not 
without temptation and provocation. Remark like- 
wise two things: that such prize-arguings were ever on 
merely superficial debatable questions; and then that 
30 they were argued generally by the fair laws of battle 
and logic-fence, by one cunning in that same. If 
their purpose was excusable, their effect was harmless. 



146 CARLYLE ON 

perhaps beneficial : that of taming noisy mediocrity, 
and showing it another side of a debatable matter; to 
see both sides of which was, for the first time, to see 
the Truth of it. In his Writings themselves, are errors 
enough, crabbed prepossessions enough; yet theses 
also of a quite extraneous and accidental nature, 
nowhere a wilful shutting of the eyes to the Truth. 
Nay, is there not everywhere a heartfelt discernment, 
singular, almost admirable, if we consider through 
what confused conflicting lights and hallucinations it 10 
had to be attained, of the highest everlasting Truth, 
and beginning of all Truths: this namely, that man is 
ever, and even in the age of Wilkes and Whitfield, a 
Revelation of God to man ; and lives, moves, and has 
his being in Truth only; is either true, or, in strict 15 
speech, is not at all? 

Quite spotless, on the other hand, is Johnson's love 
of Truth, if we look at it as expressed in practice, as 
what we have named Honesty of action. "Clear 
your mind of Cant;" clear it, throw Cant utterly 20 
away: such was his emphatic, repeated precept; and 
did not he himself faithfully conform to it? The Life 
of this man has been, as it were, turned inside out, 
and examined with microscopes by friend and foe; 
yet was there no I^ie found in him. His Doings and 25 
Writings are not sJioius but performances : you may 
weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. 
Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is 
other than it pretends to be. Alas! and he wrote not 
out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages: and 30 
with that grand perennial tide of "popular delusion" 
flowing by; in whose waters he nevertheless refused 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 147 

to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too 
muddy for hiui. Observe, again, with what innate 
hatred of Cant, he takes for himself, and offers to 
others, the lowest possible view of his business, which 

5 he followed with such nobleness. Motive for writing 
he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet 
he wrote so. Into the region of Poetic Art he indeed 
never rose; there was no ideal without him avowing 
itself in his work: the nobler was that unavowed ideal 

lo which lay within him, and commanded saying. Work 
out thy Artisanship in the spirit of an Artist! They 
who talk loudest about the dignity of Art, and fancy 
that they too are Artistic guild-brethren, and of the 
Celestials, — let them consider well what manner of 

15 man this was, who felt himself to be only a hired day- 
laborer. A laborer that was worthy of his hire; that 
has labored not as an eye-servant, but as one found 
faithful ! Neither was Johnson in those days perhaps 
wholly a unique. Time was when, for money, you 

20 might have ware: and needed not, in all departments, 
in that of the Epic Poem, in that of the Blacking 
Bottle, to rest content with the iwere persuasion that 
you had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet 
the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of Puffery) had not 

25 been rent open, — to whirl and grind, as in a West- 
Indian Tornado, all eartlily trades and things into 
wreck, and dust, and consummation,— and regenera- 
tion. Be it quickly, since it must be! 

That mercy can dwell only with Valor, is an old 

30 sentiment or proposition; which in Johnson again 
receives confirmation. Few men on record have had 
a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old 



148 CARLYLE ON 

Samuel. He was called the Bear; and did indeed too 
often look, and roar, like one; being forced to it in 
his own defence: yet within that shaggy exterior of 
his there beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a 
little child's. Nay generally, his very roaring was 5 
but the anger of affection : the rage of a Bear, if you 
will ; but of a Bear bereaved of her whelps. Touch 
his Religion, glance at the Church of England, or the 
Divine Right; and he was upon you! These things 
were his Symbols of all that was good and precious 10 
for men; his very Ark of the Covenant: whoso laid 
hand on them tore asunder his heart of hearts. Not 
out of hatred to the opponent, but of love to the thing 
opposed, did Johnson grow cruel, fiercely contradic- 
tory: this is an important distinction ; never to be for- 15 
gotten in our censure of his conversational outrages. 
But observe also with what humanity, what openness 
of love, he can attach himself to all things: to a blind 
old woman, to a Doctor Levett, to a Cat "Hodge." 
"His thoughts in the latter part of his life were fre- 20 
quently employed on his deceased friends; he often 
muttered these or such-like sentences: 'Poor man! 
and then he died.' " How he patiently converts his 
poor home into a Lazaretto; endures, for long years, 
the contradiction of the miserable and unreasonable; 25 
with him unconnected, save that they had no other 
to yield them refuge! Generous old man ! Worldly 
possession he has little; yet of this he gives freely; 
from his own hard-earned shilling, the halfpence for 
the poor, that "waited his coming out," are not with- 30 
held: the poor "waited the coming out" of one not 
quite so poor! A Sterne can write sentimentalities on 



BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 149 

Dead Asses : Johnson has a rough voice ; but he finds 
the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the 
streets, carries her home on his own shoulders, and 
like a good Samaritan gives help to the help-needing, 

5 worthy or unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in 
that sense, to cover a multitude of Sins? No Penny-a- 
week Committee-Lady, no manager of Soup-kitchens, 
dancer at Charity-balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged 
man; but where, in all England, could there have 

lo been found another soul so full of Pity, a hand so 
heavenlike bounteous as his? The widow's mite, we 
know, was greater than all the other gifts. 

Perhaps it is this divine feeling of affection, 
throughout manifested, that principally attracts us 

15 towards Johnson. A true brother of men is he; and 
filial lover of the Earth; who, with little bright spots 
of Attachxnent, "where lives and works some loved 
one," has beautified "this rough solitary earth into a 
peopled garden." Lichfield, with its mostly dull and 

2J limited inhabitants, is to the last one of the sunny 
islets for him: Salve magna parens ! Or read those 
Letters on his Mother's death: what a genuine solemn 
grief and pity lies recorded there; a looking back 
into the Past, unspeakably mournful, unspeakably 

25 tender. And yet calm, sublime; for he must now 
act, not look: his venerated Mother has been taken 
from him ; but he must now write a Rasselas to de- 
fray her interment. Again, in this little incident, 
recorded in his Book of Devotion, are not the 

30 tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper than 
in many a blank verse Tragedy; as, indeed, "the 
fifth act of a Tragedy" (though unrhymed) does 



15° CARLYLE ON 

*'lie in every death-bed, were it a peasant's, and 
of straw:" 

"Sunday, October i8, 1767. Yesterday, at about ten in the 
morning, I took my leave forever of my dear old friend, Catherine 
Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, and has 5 
been but little parted from us since. She buried my father, my 
brother, and my mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. 

" I desired all to withdraw ; then told her that we were to 
part forever ; that as Christians, we should part with prayer ; and 
that I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. 10 
She expressed great desire to hear me ; and held up her poor 
hands as she lay in bed, with great fervor, while I prayed kneel- 
ing by her 

' ' I then kissed her. She told me tl]At to part was the greatest 
pain she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again 15 
in a better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes and great emo- 
tion of tenderness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted ; I 
humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more." 

Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft well 
of Pity springs within! Still more tragical is this 20 
other scene: "Johnson mentioned that he could not 
in general accuse himself of having been an undutiful 
son. 'Once, indeed,' said he, 'I was disobedient: I 
refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. 
Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remem- 25 
brance of it is painful. A few years ago I desired to 
atone for this fault.' " — But by what method? — What 
method was now possible? Hear it; the words are 
again given as his own, though here evidently by a less 
capable reporter: 30 

" Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure 
in the morning, but I was compelled to it by conscience. Fifty 
years ago, madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial 



BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 151 

piety. My father had been in the liabit of attending Uttoxeter 
market, and opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Con- 
fined by indisposition, he desired me, that day, to go and attend 
the stall in his place. My pride prevented me ; I gave my father 
5 a refusal. — And now to-day I have been to Uttoxeter ; I went into 
the market at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood 
with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used 
to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was 
expiatory." 

10 Who does not figure to himself this spectacle, amid 
the "raihy weather, and the sneers," or wonder, "of 
the bystanders" ? The memory of old Michael John- 
son, rising from the far distance; sad-beckoning in 
the "moonlight of memory:" how he had toiled faith- 

15 fully hither and thither; patiently among the lowest 
of the low; been buffeted and beaten down, yet ever 
risen again, ever tried it anew — And oh! when the 
wearied old man, as Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, 
or whatsoever it was that Fate had reduced him to, 

20 begged help of thee for one day, — how savage, diabolic, 
was that mean Vanity, which answered. No! He 
sleeps now; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps: but 
thou, O Merciless, how now wilt thou still the sting 
of that remembrance? — The picture of Samuel John- 

25 son standing bareheaded in the market there, is one 
of the grandest and saddest we can paint. Repent- 
ance! repentance! he proclaims, as with passionate 
sobs: but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will 
give him audience: the earthly ear and heart, that 

30 should have heard it, are now closed, unresponsive 
forever. 

That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling Affection- 
ateness, the inmost essence of his being, must liave 



152 CARLYLE ON 

looked forth, in one form or another, through John- 
son's whole character, practical and intellectual, 
modifying both, is not to be doubted. Yet through 
what singular distortions and superstitions, moping 
melancholies, blind habits, whims about "entering 5 
with the right foot," and "touching every post as he 
walked along:" and all the other mad chaotic lumber 
of a brain that, with sun-clear intellect, hovered for- 
ever on the verge of insanity, — must that same inmost 
essence have looked forth; unrecognizable to all but 10 
the most observant! Accordingly it was not recog- 
nized; Johnson passed not for a fine nature, but for a 
dull, almost brutal one. Might not, for example, the 
first-fruit of such a Lovingness, coupled with his quick 
Insight, have been expected to be a peculiarly cour- 15 
teous demeanor as man among men? In Johnson's 
"Politeness," which he often, to the wonder of some, 
asserted to be great, there was indeed somewhat that 
needed explanation. Nevertheless, if he insisted 
always on handing lady-visitors to their carriage; 20 
though with the certainty of collecting a mob of gazers 
in Fleet Street, — as might well be, the beau having 
on, by way of court dress, "his rusty brown morning 
suit, a pair of old shoes for slippers, a little shrivelled 
wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves 25 
of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging 
loose:" — in all this we can see the spirit of true Polite- 
ness, only shining through a strange medium. Thus 
again, in his apartments, at one time, there were 
unfortunately no chairs. "A gentleman who fre- 30 
quently visited him whilst writing his Idlers, con- 
stantly found him at his desk, sitting on one with 



BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHN SO IV. i53 

three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that 
Johnson never forgot its defects; but would either 
hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure 
against some support ; taking no notice of its imper- 

5 fection to his visitor," — who meanwhile, we suppose, 
sat upon folios, or in the sartorial fashion. "It was 
remarkable in Johnson," continues Miss Reynolds 
("Renny dear"), "that no external circumstrnces 
ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem 

loeven sensible of their existence. Whether this was 
the effect of philosophic pride, or of some partial 
notion of his respecting high-breeding, is doubtful." 
That it was^ for one thing, the effect of genuine 
Politeness, is nowise doubtful. Not of the Pharisaical 

15 Brummellean Politeness, which would suffer crucifixion 
rather than ask twice for soup: but the noble univer- 
sal Politeness of a man that knows the dignity of men, 
and feels his own; such as may be seen in the patri- 
archal bearing of an Indian Sachem; such as Johnson 

20 himself exhibited, when a sudden chance brought him 
into dialogue with his king. To us, with our view 
of the man, it nowise appears "strange" that he should 
have boasted himself cunning in the laws of polite- 
ness; nor "stranger still," habitually attentive to 

25 practise them. 

More legibly is this influence of the Loving heart 
to be traced in his intellectual character. What, 
indeed, is the beginning of intellect, the first induce- 
ment to the exercise thereof, but attraction towards 

30 somewhat, affection for it? Thus, too, who ever saw, 
or will see, any true talent, not to speak of genius, 
the foundation of which is npt goodness, love? From 



154 CARLYLE ON 

Johnson's strength of Affection we deduce many of 
his intellectual peculiarities; especially that threaten- 
ing array of perversions, known under the name of 
"Johnson's Prejudices." Looking well into the root 
from which these sprung, we have long ceased to view 5 
them with hostility, can pardon and reverently pity 
them. Consider with what force early-imbibed 
opinions must have clung to a soul of this Affection. 
Those evil-famed Prejudices of his, that Jacobitism, 
Church-of-Englandism, hatred of the Scotch, belief 10 
in Witches, and suchlike, what were they but the 
ordinary beliefs of well-doing, well-meaning provincial 
Englishmen in that day? First gathered by his 
Father's hearth; round the kind "country fires," of 
native Staffordshire; they grew with his growth and 15 
strengthened with his strength: they were hallowed 
by fondest sacred recollections; to part with them 
was parting with his heart's blood. If the man who 
has no strength of Affection, strength of Belief, have 
no strength of Prejudice, let him thank Heaven for 20 
it, but to himself take small thanks. 

Melancholy it was, indeed, that the noble Johnson 
could not work himself loose from these adhesions; 
that he could only purify them, and wear them with 
some nobleness. Yet let us understand how they grew 25 
out from the very centre of his being: nay, moreover, 
how they came to cohere in him with what formed 
the business and worth of his Life, the sum of his 
whole Spiritual Endeavor. For it is on the same 
ground that he became throughout an Edifier and 30 
Repairer, not, as the others of his make were, a Puller- 
down ; that in an age of universal Scepticism, England 



BOSIVELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 155 

was still to produce its Believer. Mark, too, his 
candor even here; while a Dr. Adams, with placid 
surprise, asks, "Have we not evidence enough of the 
soul's immortality?" Johnson answers, "I wish for 

5 more." 

But the truth is, in Prejudice, as in all things, John- 
son was the product of England ; one of those good 
yeomen whose limbs were made in England : alas, 
the last oi such Invincibles, their day being now done! 

10 His culture is wholly English; that not of a Thinker 
but of a "Scholar:" his interests are wholly English; 
he sees and knows nothing but England; he is the 
John Bull of Spiritual Europe: let him live, love him, 
as he was and could not but be! Pitiable it is, no 

15 doubt, that a Samuel Johnson must confute Hume's 
irreligious Philosophy by some "story from a Clergy- 
man of the Bishoprick of Durham;" should see 
nothing in the great Frederick but "Voltaire's lackey;" 
in Voltaire himself but a man acerrimi ingenii, pait- 

20 caruin lite rani in ; in Rousseau but one worthy to be 
hanged; and in the universal, long-prepared, inevi- 
table Tendency of European Thought but a green-sick 
milkmaid's crotchet of, for variety's sake, "milking 
the Bull." Our good, dear John! Observe, too, 

25 what it is that he sees in the city of Paris: no feeblest 
glimpse of those D'Alemberts and Diderots, or of 
the strange questionable work they did ; solely some 
Benedictine Priests, to talk kitchen-latin with them 
about Editiones Principes. '' Monsheer Nougtoug- 

"iopatu !" — Our dear, foolish John: yet is there a lion's 
heart within him! Pitiable all these things were, we 
say; yet nowise inexcusable; nay, as basis or as foil 



156 CARLYLE O Al- 

io much else that was in Johnson, almost venerable. 
Ought we not, indeed, to honor England, and Eng- 
lish Institutions and Way of Life, that they could still 
equip such a man; could furnish him in heart and 
head to be a Samuel Johnson, and yet to love them, 5 
and unyieldingly fight for them? What truth and liv- 
ing vigor must such Institutions once have had, when, 
in the middle of the Eighteenth century, there was still 
enough left in them for this! 

It is worthy of note that, in our little British isle, the 10 
two grand Antagonisms of Europe should have stood 
embodied, under their very highest concentration, in 
two men produced simultaneously among ourselves. 
Samuel Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, 
were children nearly of the same year: through lifers 
they were spectators of the same Life-movement; often 
inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast, in all 
things, between two great men, could not be. Hume, 
well-born, competently provided for, whole in body 
and mind, of his own determination forces a way into 20 
Literature: Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, 
forlorn, is forced into it "with the bayonet of neces- 
sity at his back," And what a part did they severally 
play there! As Johnson became the father of all suc- 
ceeding Tories ; so was Hume the father of all sue- 25 
ceeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an 
accident, as worthy to be named prejudice as any of 
Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture was exclu- 
sively English; Hume's, in Scotland, became Euro- 
pean; — for which reason, too, we find his influence 30 
spread deeply over all quarters of Europe, traceable 
deeply in ftU speculation, French, German, a§ w?U a§ 



BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 157 

domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is 
hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature 
they are almost equal; both great, both among the 
greatest; yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has 

5 the widest, methodising, comprehensive eye; John- 
son the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail : 
so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. 
Neither of the two rose into Poetry; yet both to some 
approximation thereof: Hume to something of an epic 

10 clearness and method, as in his delineation of the 
Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a deep lyric 
tone of plaintiveness and impetuous graceful power, 
scattered over his fugitive compositions. Both, rather 
to the general surprise, had a certain rugged humor 

15 shining through their earnestness: the indication, in- 
deed, that they loere earnest men, and had subdued \\\q\x 
wild world into a kind of temporary home and safe 
dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics: 
yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had 

20 very much to triumph over; farther, he alone ennobled 
his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a 
Prison, to be endured with heroic faith; to Hume it 
was little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show- 
booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of 

25 which it was not worth while to quarrel; the whole 
would break up, and be at liberty, so soon. Both 
realized the highest task of manhood, that of living 
like men; each died not unfitly, in his way: Hume as 
one, with factitious, half-false gayety, taking leave of 

30 what was itself wholly but a Lie: Johnson as one, 
with awe-struck, yet resolute and piously expectant 
heart, taking leave of a Reality, to enter a Reality 



15^ BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOMMSOM. 

still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, 
from first to last : whether, with some hesitation, we 
can admit that he was intrinsically the better-gifted, — 
may remain undecided. 

These two men now rest; the one in Westminsters 
Abbey here ; the other in the Calton Hill Churchyard 
of Edinburgh. Through Life they did not meet: as 
contrasts, "like in unlike," love each other; so might 
they two have loved, and communed kindly, — had not 
the terrestrial dross and darkness that was in them lo 
withstood! One day, their spirits, what Truth was 
in each, will be found working, living in harmony and 
free union, even here below. They were the two half- 
men of their time: whoso should combine the intrepid 
Candor and decisive scientific Clearness of Hume, 15 
with the Reverence, the Love, and devout Humility 
of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. Till 
such whole man arrive for us, and the distracted time 
admit of such, might the Heavens but bless poor Eng- 
land with half-men worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of 20 
these, resembling these even from afar! Be both 
attentively regarded, let the true Effort of both pros- 
per; — and for the present, both take our affectionate 
farewell ! 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 



The text is in the revised form in which it has appeared since 
Macaulay's Essays were, reprinted in England in 1843. The. foot- 
notes are those then appended by the author. 

For the circumstances under which the essay was written, see 
the Introduction, Parts II. and III. 

For Macaulay's later treatment of Johnson, see the article 
"Johnson" in the Encyclopiedia Britannica, contributed in 1856. 

References to volume and page of Boswell are to the edition by 
G. Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols., 1887. The accompanying dates will en- 
able the passages to be found without difficulty in other editions. 
Occasional reference is made to the original Croker, 5 vols., 1831. 
Johnson's works are cited in the edition by Murphy, I2 vols., 
1823. Hawkins is cited in his second edition, and Mrs. Thrale in 
fohnsoniana, collected and edited by Robina Napier, 1884. 

I : 13, as bad as bad could be. See the Life, June 3, 1784 
(iv. 284). This was Johnson's last visit to Oxford. 

2: 10, Derrick. Samuel Derrick, an Irish poet, who succeeded 
Beau Nash as " King of Bath." Appears in Smollett's Humphry 
Clinker. 

3:7, the lines. Marmion IV. Intr. 131-6. — 14, Allan Ram- 
say, the painter. Born 1709, died 1784, as given by Croker. The 
second version is Boswell's error. Here designated " the painter " 
to distinguish him from his father, Allan Ramsay, the poet (1686- 
1758), author of The Gentle Shepherd. — 20, Mrs. Thrale. Hester 
Lynch Salisbury (or Salusbury), born in 1741 ; married Henry 
Thrale, a \vealthy brewer, and M. P. for Southwark, in 1763 ; met 
Johnson in 1764. Her intimacy with Johnson lasted nearly twenty 
years. After Thrale's death (1781) she quarreled with Johnson, 
preparatory to marrying Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian music-master, 

159 



l6o NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 

resident at Bath, in 1784. She died in 1821. She was a woman 
of great vivacity, with a smattering of several languages, and a 
fondness for literary society. Besides \i&x Anecdotes of Johnson, 
consult her Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains, edited 
by Abraham Hay ward, 1861. 

4 : 15, visit to Paris. In the autumn of 1775, with the Thrales. 
See the Life, September 18, 1775 (ii. 384-401), where may be 
found what has been preserved of Johnson's own record of the 
journey. — ig. Prince Titi. See the Life of Johnson, by F. 
Grant (Great Writers Series), pp. 105-7, for an account of this 
book and of the controversy over it. — 21, Frederick Prince of 
Wales. Born 1707, died 1751 ; son of George II., father of 
George III. During his father's reign he figured in politics as 
patron of the opposition. 

5 : 10, Enfans. The present standard spelling is enfants. So 
printemps for printems, 6 : 10. — 13, Henry Bate. See English 
Newspapers, by H. R. Fox Bourne, 1887 (i. 122). Henry Bate 
(i 745-1824), afterward Sir Henry Bate Dudley. Bart., edited the 
Alorning Post, 1775-80, and afterward the Morning Llerald. The 
former, founded in 1772 as the organ of the King's party, is a high 
Tory journal and recognized dispenser of fashionable news, still 
in existence. The latter began under Dudley's editorship in 1 780 
as the organ of the Prince of Wales, and was continued until i86g. 

6:11, Lord Hailes. See note to 59:20. — 15, Montrose. 
James Graham, first marquis Ci 6 12-50), the leader of the Scot- 
tish cavaliers from 1644 to 1646. Hanged, afterwards beheaded 
and dismembered. Clarendon gives the sentence at length, but 
in telling of his death merely says, " The next day they executed 
every part and circumstance of that barbarous sentence with all 
the inhumanity imaginable." Bk. XII •, May 21, 1650. 

7:17, Byng. Admiral the Hon. John Byng (1704-57). Shot 
by order of a court martial for neglect of duty in not doing his 
best to relieve the British garrison in Minorca, besieged by the 
French. His sentence was the subject of much controversy. 
Johnson wrote three pamphlets on Byng's behalf. The prosecu- 
tion of Byng was ordered by the Newcastle ministry, but as 
Macaulay points out, the trial was begun under the Devonshire 
administration, in which Pitt held office. 



NOIES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. i6i 

9:10, Vicar of Wakefield. See the Life of Goldsmith, by 
Austin Dobson {Great Writers Series), pp. 86-87, 110-117, for 
an account of the difficulties which still surround the " celebrated 
scene." The date 1762 is now accepted. Mrs. Thrale had not 
met Johnson at this time. Boswell's account is under date of 
June 25. 1763 (i. 415). 

10 : 27, Brookes' s. Brooks's, a famous Whig club, at first 
known as Alniack's, established in 1764 in Pall Mall. In 1778, 
removed to 60, St. James's Street. Among the ' wits of Brooks's ' 
were Horace Walpole, P"ox, Sheridan, George Selwyn, and 
Charles Townshend. 

II : I, his Doctor's degree. Johnson left Oxford without taking 
a degree. In 1755 (not 1754, as given below by Macaulay) the 
University of O.^ford gave him the honorary degree of M.A., 
which appeared on the title-page of his Dictionary, and in 1775 
that of D.C.L. He also received the degree of LI>.D. from 
Trinity College, Dublin, in 1765. — 18, all, therefore, that is 7ieiv, 
etc. Between this sentence and the preceding occurs in Croker's 
note the following, which Macaulay curiously omits : " Everyone 
knows that Dr. Johnson said of Ossian that ' many men, many 
women, and many children might have written it.' " The restor- 
ation of this sentence affords a clew to what Croker meant by 
" all that is new," and refutes Macaulay 's assertion, " the only 
real objection to the story Mr. Croker has missed." — 31, Blair. 
The Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), author of Lectures on 
Rhetoric and of Sermons. 

i^: S, satires of Juvenal. See the Z?y>, January, 1749 (i. 193). 
The satire of Horace referred to is the second of the First Book. 
— 10, Prior's tales. See the Life, September 22, 1777 (iii. 192) ; 
Croker iv. 45, n. — 30, one blunder. Croker iii. 20, n. 

14:8, epigram. Life, IJ^^ (i- ^57 ^rid n. 5). Ad LMuram 
parituram. " To Laura in childbirth " — 15, sectilar ode. Car- 
men Seculare, line 15. — 20, another ode. iii. 22, 2. — 21, laborantes 
utero puellas. " Girls in childbirth." — 22, fourth-forvi. The 
classes or grades in English schools are called forms, numbered 
from first to sixth, beginning with the lowest. — 24, an inscription. 
See the Tour, September 21 (v. 234). The sentence quoted here 
is intended to mean : " John Macleod, chief of his clan, united in 



102 NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 

marriage to Flora Macdonald, restored in the year 1686 of the 
common era, this tower of Dunvegan, by far the most ancient abode 
of his ancestors, which had long fallen utterly into decay." The 
Latin is contemptible, not because of its " incorrect structure," 
but because of the many words used that do not occur in classical 
writers. The text contains proavorum (wrong) and labefactatam, 
where Boswell gives proavorum and labefectatam (wrong). 

15:15, (pMco(l>og. "Loving wisdom." — 16. ^ikoKepSrjq. "Lov- 
ing gain." — 17, Bentley. Richard Bentley (1662-1742), Master 
of Trinity College, Cambridge. The most eminent classical 
scholar of his time. — 18, Casaubon. Isaac Casaubon, classical 
scholar ; born in Geneva, 1559. Lived in England from 1610 
to his death in 1614. His son, Meric Casaubon (1599-1671), 
was also a classical scholar of note. — 22, my 1? ^. From John- 
son's P7-ayers and Meditations, April 4, 1779, which Croker 
inserted into Boswell's text. They had been edited and published 
by the Rev. George Strahan in 1785. It appears that d was an 
abbreviation used by physicians and in military records for 
Qavaroq " death," as if equivalent to " dead," and that Johnson else- 
where uses the abbreviation ^ in the same connection to mean 
" friends." See the Athenaum for June 18, 1887. 

16: 7, rt note. See the Life, March 19, 1782 (iv. 143). " Mr. 
Holder, in the Strand, Dr. Johnson's apothecary," Boswell ex- 
plains. — 19, Corderius. Mathurin Cordier, born in Normandy in 
1479, died at Geneva in 1564. A famous professor, author of 
numerous treatises, among them the Colloqiiia Scholastica, a book 
of Latin dialogues for beginners. — 25, George I. Succeeded to the 
throne at the death of Anne, August i, 1714. Entered London 
on September 20, 17 14, 

17 : 14, Mattaire. See the Life under October 17, 1780 (iv. 2). 
Michael (or Michel) Maittaire (1668-1747) was a scholar, and 
editor of classical writers. Born in France ; came to England in his 
youth. — 16, Senilia " (Poems) of Old Age." — 18, Carteret a dactyl. 
John Carteret, Earl Granville (1690-1763). Secretary of State 
in the Wilmington Administration, 1742-44. Croker would prob- 
ably not have misunderstood the objection had Johnson said, " to 
use the uninflected form ' Carteret ' as a vocative." The reason 
for Mattaire's not using the inflected form, Carferete, is that the 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 163 

second e would be long, which would destroy the meter of his 
verse. — 28, another occasion. " Sir, I have found you an argu- 
ment, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding." Life, 
under June 16, 1784 (iv. 313). 

18: I, Joannes Baro de ; Vicecoines de. John, Baron of ; Vis- 
count. 

19 : I, To7n Davies. See the Life, August 21, 17S0 (iii. 434). 
It was at his shop that the famous first meeting between Boswell 
and Johnson occurred on May 16, 1763. See the Life (i. 391). 
The " dogma of the old physiologists" related to the supposed 
spontaneous generation of insects in decaying carcases. See, for 
instance, Vergil, Georgics iv. 538-558. Dryden had said, " The 
corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic. — 24, Malone, 
Edmond Malone, the Shakespearean scholar and editor. Born in 
Dublin, 1741 ; settled in London, 1777 ; elected to the Literary 
Club, 1782. In 1789-go Malone assisted Boswell in revising the 
MS. and correcting the proof of the Life. After Boswell's death 
he edited the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth editions (1799, 1804, 
1807, 181 1). His Shakespeare was published in 1790. Died 1812. 

20 : 2, Sir Reginald Malcolm. Presumably the hero of some 
forgotten novel. — 3, Pelham. The hero of Bulwer Lytton's second 
novel, Pelham, or The Adventures of a Gentleman (1827). — 10, 
the music-master. Piozzi, see note to 3 : 20. — 24, Markland, etc. 
Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), classical scholar; John Jortin, 
D.D. (1698-1770), ecclesiastical historian ; Styan Thirlby (1692- 
1753), scholar. Johnson printed in his edition of Shakespeare 
some notes by Thirlby. — 28, Lt ivas him. Roger Boyle, first Earl 
of Orrery (1621-79). 

21 '.zs, Ln one place. Croker iv. 94. — ■n, Ln another. Croker 
iv. 44. 

22 : 6, Mrs. ThraWs book, etc. The books referred to are as 
follows : Thomas Tyers, A biographical sketch of Dr. S.Johnson 
(1785) ; Hester Lynch Thrale (Mrs. Piozzi), Anecdotes of S.John- 
son during the last twenty years of his life (1786) ; Sir John Haw- 
kins, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1787) ; Arthur Murphy, An 
Essay on the Life and Genius of S. Johnson (1792); Joseph 
Cradock, Literary Memoirs (1828). Besides these, Croker made 
insertions from some dozen other sources. 



164 NOTES TO A/ACA [/LAV'S ESSAY. 

23 : 3, Ut per Iccve. From Persius, Sat. i. 64-5. " So that the 
joint will let critical nails smoothly pass " ; i. e., so that the junc- 
tion could not be detected by the thumbnail. — 24, Beloe's version. 
Herodohis, Translated from the Greek, with Notes. By the Rev. 
William Beloe (1791). Several editions. 

24:9, seen by Johnson. See the Tour, September 19 (v. 22() 
and October 2 and 3 (v. 277 and 279). It does not appear, though, 
that Johnson suspected it was for publication. In his prospectus of 
the Life (v. 421), Boswell asserts that " Dr. Johnson was well in- 
formed of his design." — 29, rifacimenti. Italian, "adaptations"; 
singular, rifacimento. — harmonies. Harmony : "A collection of 
parallel passages from different works treating of the same sub- 
ject, for the purpose of showing their agreement and of explain- 
ing their apparent discrepancies," Cetit. Diet. Specifically used 
of compilations of the four gospels into one continuous narrative. 

25-3. Diatessaron. A harmony of the four gospels. A(a 
Teaadpuv, " through four." — 5, disciple tvhom Jesus loved. So John 
refers to himself. John xix. 26 ; etc. — 9, Should God create. See 
Far. Lost ix. 91 1-3. — 19, Fepys's Diaty. Written 1660-65 \ 
first published 1825. — Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs. The title of 
the work is Memoirs of the Life of Col. John LIutchinson, By his 
Widoio (written 1664-71, first published 1806). 

26:5, race. "A strong peculiarity by which the origin or 
species of anything may be recognized, as especially, the flavor of 
wine," Cent. Diet., race^, 8 (obsolete). — 19, Eclipse is first, etc. 
The famous words in which the result of a race at Epsom was 
announced in 1769. Ahorse is "distanced" that is more than 
a certain distance behind the winner at the finish. — 23, Many of 
the greatest men, etc. A sweeping assertion, difficult to support. 
Macaulay explains himself in 29 : 24 by mentioning Tacitus, 
Clarendon, Alfieri, and Johnson, who are not enough in either 
numbers or greatness. — 29, Johnson described him. See the Life, 
October 16, 1769 (ii. 84) — 31, Dunciad. Pope's first version of 
the Dunciad appeared in 1728, the altered and enlarged version 
in 1741. — Beauclerk used his name. In a letter to Lord Charle- 
mont. See Hill's note to the Life, ii. 192. 

27 :4, some eminent man. " By the time Boswell was twenty- 
six years old he could boast that he had made the acquaintance of 



A'OTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 165 

Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli among foreigners ; and of Adam 
Smith, Robertson, Hume, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Horace 
Walpole, Wilkes, and perhaps Reynolds, among Englishmen. 
He had twice at least received a letter from the Earl of 
Chatham." Hill (in the Life, ii. 13, n. 3). — 6, binding it, etc. 
Job xxxi. 36. — 8, Shakespeare Jubilee, 1769. Boswell appeared 
at a masquerade " in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. . . 
On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva la 
Liberia." See Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 80. For " Paoli Bos- 
well," see the Tour, August 28 (v. 123). — 14, family pride. See 
Boswell's remarkable account of his ancestry, Tour, August 15 
(v. 25, n. 2). — 21, Tom Paitie. Thomas Paine (1737-1809), 
author of The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason ; Ameri- 
can envoy to France, 1781. The anecdote concerning him eludes 
search, as does the succeeding one. — ^i'^, evil presentiments. See 
the Life, March 28, 1776 (iii. 4). 

28 : 2, read the prayerbook. See the Tour, September 25 and 26 
(v. 258-9). — 3, a hair of the dog. " The same thing that caused the 
malady or trouble used as a means of relief ; specifically, spirits 
drunk in the morning after a debauch, for the purpose of steady- 
ing the nerves : in allusion to the popular superstition that a hair 
of the dog that has bitten one will cure the bite." Cent. Diet., 
s. V. hair. — 4, came azvay maudlin. Probably referring to Bos- 
well's language in a letter quoted by Hill, ii. 93, n. 3. — 6, one of 
his babies. Veronica. See the Tour, August 15 (v. 15). — 8, the 
sailors quieted him. By giving him hold of a rope tied to a mast, 
with instructions to pull when the word was given. See the Tozir, 
August 3 (v. 282). — 10, at Lady Cork's. Then Miss Monckton. 
See the Life, under May 8, 1781 (iv. 109-10 and no, n. l). 
Macaulay makes a slight slip here ; it was not the ladies, but 
Johnson, that Boswell's merriment annoyed. — 12, the Duchess of 
Argyle. Lady Hamilton. See the Tour, October 25 (v. 355-9). 
— 13, Colonel Macleod. Tour, September 16 (v. 215).— 15, his 
father. See 75 : 23 and 109 : 25. Mrs. Boswell described her 
husband as " a man led by a bear." See his note to Johnson's 
letter in the Life, 1773 (ii. 269, n. i). 

29 : 1, one of his contemporaries. Horace Walpole. — 2, another. 
Q^rrick, See Boswell's note in the Life^ 1765 (i, 413, n^ 6).— 6, 



1 66 NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 

Hierocles. A legendary Greek collector of witty sayings. — 15, 
Paul Pry. A busybody. The name is from John Poole's Paul 
Pry., a comedy (1825). — 24, Tacitus, etc. The biographies re- 
ferred to are Tacitus's Agricola ; Clarendon's Hie Life of 
Edward, Earl of Clarendon, etc., written by Himself; Alfieri's 
Memoirs ; Johnson's Life of Savage and Lives of the Poets. — 31, 
hereditary gentility. Life, under July 16, 1765(1.491-2). — slave- 
trade. Life, under September 22, 1777 (iii. 203-4). 

30: I, entailing. Life, March 15, 1776 (ii. 429). — 19, abstract- 
edly. As used here, equivalent to abstractly ; has also the sense, 
" with absence of mind." — 23, Justice Shallow, etc. For his 
" nonsense" see 2 Henry LV. iii. 2. He reappears in the Merry 
Wives of Windsor. For Dr. Caius, see the Merry Wives of 
Windsor i. 4, etc. For Fluellen, see He^iry V. iii. 2, etc. 
Fluellen's consonants are not " misplaced " but mispronounced. 
Fluellen is a " phonetic spelling" of Llewelyn. — 21, Rousseau. 
In his Confessions. — 28, Byron. In Ciiilde Harold and else- 
where. 

31 : 4, Alnaschar. The Barber's fifth brother. Lane's Thou- 
sand and One N^ights i^. 359) calls him El-Feshshar. — Malvolio. 
See Twelfth Night ii. 5, etc.— 13, Palace of Truth. De- 
scribed in Le Palais de la V^riti, one of the Contes Moraux 
(1802) of Mme. de Genlis. — 31, as Mr. Croker tells. In his 
Preface (Croker I. xxix). 

32 : 6, the king. Charles I. In the altercation over the resist- 
ance of Sir John Hotham to the King's attempt to enter Hull 
(1642), Parliament declared that "the levying of war against his 
laws and authority, though not against his person, is levying war 
against the King ; but the levying of force against his personal 
commands (though accompanied with his presence) and not against 
his laws and authority, but in the maintenance thereof, is no levy- 
ing of war against the King, but for him," Clarendon, History of 
the Great Rebellion, Bk. V., May 26, 1642 (ii. 529 ; Oxford, 1826). 
(Punctuation altered.) — 12, without some expression of contempt. 
This clause misplaced. It should follow mentions, not illustrate. 

33:4, Churchill, Kenrick. The Rev. Charles Churchill 
(1731-64), a satirist, caricatured Johnson as Pomposo in a poem 
entitled The Qliost {\ib2). William Kenrick, a hackwriter, at- 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 167 

tacked Johnson's Shakespeare in 1765, and subsequently attacked 
Johnson in An Epistle to James Bosxvell, etc. (1768). — 6, a cotnpe- 
tent fortune. His pension of ^300, bestowed in 1762 for his ser- 
vices to literature. — 15, orange-peel. See the Life, March 31, 
1775 (ii- 330)- — 20, inmates. Fully described in various passages 
in the Life. Brief accounts in Leslie Stephen's y^^/^wj-^;?, pp. 146- 
50. — 29, That celebrated club. The "Literary Club," founded 
by Reynolds in 1764. See the Life under that date (i. 477-81). 
Macaulay gives here a partial list of members. See Stephen's 
Johnson, pp. 64-83. For the difference in age between Johnson 
and his friends, see the chart in Hill's Life, vol. vi. 

34 : 29, Congreve, etc. Of the authors enumerated in this para- 
graph or mentioned elsewhere in the essay, Macaulay has discussed 
in his Essays Congreve (Comic Dramatists of the Restoration') and 
Addison, and in the Encyc . Brit. Goldsmith. Johnson has ac- 
counts and criticisms of Denham, Milton, Waller, Dorset, Step- 
ney, Dryden, Smith, Montagu (whom he calls by his title Halifax), 
Parnell, Rowe, Addison, Hughes, Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, 
Gay, Tickell, Savage, Swift, Pope, Thomson, Ambrose Philips, 
Young, Mallet, and Gray, in his Lives of the Poets. 

35 : 12, his first comedy. The Old Bachelor, first performed in 
1693 ; Congreve was born in 1670. He was appointed, at one 
time or another, a commissioner for licensing hackney coaches, a 
commissioner for wine licenses, and Secretary of Jamaica, and 
held places in the Pipe Office and in the Custom House. — 13, 
Smith. Edmund Neale (1662-1710) ; changed his name to Smith 
to gratify an uncle who brought him up after his father's death. 
Phcedraand Hippolytns was acted in 1680. Halifax had promised 
Smith a place of £yx) a year for the dedication, which Smith did 
not take the trouble to write. — 16, Rozue. Nicholas Rowe (1673- 
171 8) ; wrote the tragedies. The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore ; 
edited Shakespeare (1709) ; and translated Lucan. — 19, Presenta- 
tions. The Secretary of Presentations to the Lord Chancellor had 
the duty of registering nominations to livings in the Lord Chan- 
cellor's gift. — 20, Hughes. John Hughes (1677-1720), author of 
The Siege of Damascus, a tragedy. — 21, Ambrose Philips (1671- 
1749). Remembered for his relations with Pope, and for his nick- 
name of Namby Pamby,— 24, Stepney. George Stepney (1663- 



l68 NOTES TO MACAU LAY'S ESSAY. 

^1^1)- Johnson gives little beyond his epitaph and a list of his em- 
bassies. — Montague. Charles Montagu, created Baron, then Earl 
of, Halifax (1661-1715), wrote The City and Country Mouse (\t%']) 
in conjunction with Prior. It was a burlesque of Dryden's Hind 
and Panther. See Horace, Sat. ii. 6, 80-117. — 3i. f^i^ garter. 
etc. "At the accession of George the First [he] was made Earl 
of Halifax, Knight of the Garter, and first commissioner of the 
treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the aud- 
itorship of the exchequer." Lives of the Poets (Halifax). A 
slight slip by Macaulay. 

36:1, Oxford. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. He and 
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, were the leaders of the 
Tory ministry (1710-14). The " white staff" was the symbol of 
his office as Lord High Treasurer. — 3, Parnell. Thomas Par- 
nell (1679-1718), author of The Hermit, a narrative poem. — 4, 
Steele. He was expelled from the House of Commons in 1714, 
for political writings, and re-elected in 171 5. Commissioner of 
stamps, 1710-14. — 6, Maimvaritig. (1668-1712). Editor of 
The Medley, a political newspaper, and from 1710 to 1712 a 
member of Parliament. Pronounced as if spelled Mannering. — 
7, the imprest. Money advanced as a loan to a government officer, 
for use in a public service. — Tickell. Thomas Tickell (1686- 
1740), poet ; friend of Addison. — 8, Addison. Secretary of State 
in Lord Stanhope's administration (1717-18). — ir, Dorset. Charles 
Sackville, sixth Earl (1637-1706). Macaulay intimates that the 
poetry of Sheffield, Rochester, and Roscommon owed its interest 
chiefly to the rank of the writers. — 21, the house of Hanover. 
Came in with George I. in 1714. The "supreme power" was 
in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, from 1721 to 1742. 

37:1, Sir Charles Hanbiiry Williams, (i 709-1 759). Diplo- 
matist, and writer of political verse. — 8, befriended a single ?nan. 
See 40 : 21. — 12, unjust war. The war with Spain (1739-42). 
— 16, St. James's. The London residence of the English kings 
from William IH. to George IV. — Leicester house. In Leicester 
Square. Here Frederick, Prince of Wales, lived, from 1737 to 
his death in 1751. — 19, literary career. It must be borne in 
mind that this description in great part is applicable, not to 
Johnson, \>\\\ to hi§ earlier associates, like Savage and Boyse, 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 169 

Johnson was never dissipated or improvident. Some months 
after his first visit to London he returned to Lichfield, and brought 
Mrs. Jolinson to live in London with him, and she was provided 
with shelter continuously until her death in 1752. Boswell gives 
a list of Johnson's houses in a note to the Life, under September 
21, 1779 (iii- 405 > '^- 6)- The famous story of Johnson and Savage 
walking the streets together all night for want of a lodging pre- 
sents difficulties. See the Life, 1744, and Hill's note (i. 163, n. 
2). Macaulay's description of the Grub Street poet applies 
equally well to the Elizabethan dramatist. — 22, The prices paid. 
Johnson received ten guineas for London. In 1738-39 he made 
only ;[f49/7. in nine months. — 25, provide for the day. " ]\I«ch 
of my life has been lost under the pressure of disease ; much has 
been trifled away ; and much has always been spent in provision 
for the day that was passing over me," Preface to the Diction- 
ary, loth page. — 26, The lean kine. See Gen. xli. 

38 : 2, King's Bench. The King's Bench was a prison, which 
took its name from the Court of King's Bench. The Common 
Side was the most miserable part of the prison, where inmates 
were lodged that could not pay the fees for better quarters. — 3, the 
Fleet. A prison in Fleet Street, demolished in 1844. 11, Grnb 
Street. The proverbial abode of the small author. Now known 
as Milton Street, after one Milton, a builder. — 13, St. Martin s. 
The church of St. Martin's in the Fields, Trafalgar Square. 
" The labyrinthine alleys near the church, destroyed in the forma- 
tion of Trafalgar Square, were known as ' the Bermudas.' " Au- 
gustus Hare, Walks in London, ii. 4. — 13, bulk. See Cent. Diet. 
— 14, glass-house. Glass-factory. — 18, Kitcat. This was a Whig 
club in Shire Lane, Fleet Street. It was named after Christopher 
Cat, or Katt, a pastry-cook. Among the members were Addison, 
Steele, Congreve, and Mainwaring. — 19, Scriblerus club. An 
earlier political club, founded by Pope. Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, 
Parnell, and Prior were members. — 20, the High Allies. The 
Emperor, Prussia, the Dutch, and England, allied against Louis 
XIV. (1701) — 23, Albemarle Street. In this street is the famous 
publishing house of John Murray. — Paternoster Row. The 
headquarters of the London book-trade. 

39: 5, third night. The profits of every third performance of 



170 NO TES TO MA CA ULA V ' S ESSA Y. 

a play were given to the author as his benefit. — 12, Savage. 
Richard Savage (1698-1744), author of The Bastard and The 
Wanderer-. See the Life^ 1744 (i. 161-174), and Johnson's Life 
of Savage. — 13, Boyse. Samuel Boyse (1708-1749), a forgotten 
literary drudge. For the anecdote cited by Carlyle (ill : 3), see 
Hawkins, p. 157, m. — 18, Belty Careless. A notorious character 
of the time, whose name has become proverbial. — 19, Porridge 
island. An alley near St. Martin's Church, filled with cheap 
cook-shops. See Thrale's Anecdotes, p. 44 (Croker iv. 381). — 
28, the wild ass, the tmico7-n. See /oi> xxxix. 5-9. 

40:18, To/'e. For his translation of Homer (1715-1725) he 
received something like ^9000. — 21, Young. The Rev. Edward 
Young (1681-1765), author of Night Thoughts. — 25, Thomson. 
From 1737 to 1748 enjoyed a pension of ;^ioo from Frederick, 
Prince of Wales.— 26, Mallet. David Mallet, or Malloch (1705 ?- 
1765), poet and dramatist. Appointed under-secretary to the 
Prince of Wales, with a salary of ;^200 a year. — 28, kept his shop. 
Richardson was a printer, and master of the Stationers' Company, 
one of the London guilds. " Keep thy shop, and thy shop will 
keep thee," is proverbial. 

41 : \, Johnson. Arrested for debt in 1756. See Hill's note to 
the Life (i. 303, n. i). — Collins. Not known to have been 
actually arrested, though described as "in hiding from bailiffs." 
— Fielding. Frequently in difficulties, but no actual arrest is 
recorded. In his ^wc-Z/a,- Lieutenant Booth, understood to rep- 
resent the author, is arrested for debt (bk. viii.). Macaulay has 
doubtless taken this incident literally.— 2, Thomson. The story 
is that after losing his position as Secretary of the Briefs (1737), 
he was arrested for a debt of about £^o, and that Quin the 
actor called upon him at the sponging house, introduced him- 
self, and presented him with a supper and a £100 note, as a return 
for the pleasure he had received from reading Thomson's poems. 

42 : 8, Cur II, etc. Edmund Curll and Thomas Osborne were 
booksellers. The first is notorious for his connection with Pope ; 
the second for having been knocked down by Johnson : " Sir, he 
was impertinent to me, and I beat him," Life, 1742 (i. 154). 
Curll and Osborne are ridiculed in the Diinciad, Bk. ii. — 14, 
Pope. In the Diinciad, Bk. ii. 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 171 

43 : 2, Streathain Park. Thrale's house, situated at Streatham 
in Surrey, close to London. — 3, behind the screen. Johnson 
dined with Cave, his publisher, at his house in St. John's Gate at 
Clerkenwell, in 1744, "Shortly after the publication of the Life 
of Savage" and sat behind a screen, that another guest might not 
see his shabby clothing. See Malone's note to the Life, 1744 (i. 
163, «, i). — II, tore his dinner. See the Life, under August 5, 
1763 (i. 468). — 22, 7vant of meat. Johnson signed one of his 
letters to Cave, " Your's, impransus ;" i. e., "without dinner," 
Life, 1738 (i. 137). See also the Life, under August 5, 1763 (i. 
468), and the Tour, October 4 (v. 284). — 24, insincerity of patrons. 
An allusion to the story of Johnson and Chesterfield. See 
Carlyle, pp. 116-17, and the Z;/<?, 1754 (i. 256-257). — 25, That 
bread, etc. From Dante, Faradiso xvii. 5S-60. 

" Thou shah have proof how savoureth of salt 
The bread of others, and how hard a path 
The going up and down another's stairs." 

— Longfellow's translation. 

— 27, deferred hope. Proverbs xiii. 12. — 31, eo innnitior, etc. 
" So much the harsher, because he had endured," Tacitus, 
Annals i. 20. Said of Aufidienus Rufus, an officer risen from 
the ranks. 

44:8, starving girl. See the Z/yV, under June ig, 1784 (iv. 
321). See Carlyle 149 : i. — 20, with Mrs. Thrale. See her Anec- 
dotes, p. 45. — 25, the Good-natured Man. See Dobson, Gold- 
smith, pp. 130-136 ; Thrale, p. 98. 

45:1. Lady Tavistock. From Mrs. Thrale's Anecdotes, p. 64; 
Croker ii. 94. — 9, in the ordinary intercourse of society. Mis- 
placed ; should more properly follow likely. — 13, Holofernes. See 
Love s Labor Lost iv. 2, etc. " When the newspapers had tacked 
them [Johnson and Goldsmith] together as the pedant and his 
flatterer in Love's Labour Lost," Thrale, p. 75. — 14, Mjs. Carter. 
Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), a learned lady. See the Life, 
April 20, 1781 (iv. 97). 

46 :i2, the Arabian tale. Lane, Thousand and One Nights, i. 
69. 

47 : 2, Hogarth. From Thrale's Anecdotes, p. 58. See Hill 



172 NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 

iii. 229, n. 3, and Psalms cxvi. 11. — 6, hurricane. Thrale, p. 
59 (Croker iv. 386). — 8, red-hot halls. Thrale, p. 58 (Croker 
iv. 385). Fired by garrison (1782) in the thirteenth siege (1779-83) 
of Gibraltar, then held by the English against France and Spain. 
— 13, earthquake at Lisbon. November i, 1755. See Thrale, p. 
59 (Croker iv. 386). In this earthquake and in the fire which 
followed, between 30,000 and 40,000 persons were killed. — 16, 
saw a ghost. Life, April 9, 10, 1772 (ii. 178, 182). — 18, Cock 
Lane. See the Life, under June 13, 1763 (i. 406). Churchill 
ridiculed Johnson for this ghost-hunt. For a full account of the 
Cock Lane ghost, see Harper's Magazine, August, 1893 (vol. 
Ixxxvii. p. 327). — i(),John IVesley (1703-gi). The founder of 
Methodism. See the Life, under April 15, 1778 (iii. 297), and 
May 4, 1779 ('"• 394)- — 21, Celtic genealogies. See the Tour, 
September 18 (v. 224-5). The poems referred to are the pretended 
translations from Ossian by James Macpherson (1738-96), fre- 
quently mentioned in the Life and the Tout. — 23, tuilling to be- 
lieve. Life, March 24, 1775 (ii. 318). The subject is frequently 
discussed in Boswell. — 30, Lord Roscommon. Wentworth Dillon, 
Earl of Roscommon (1634-85), author of an Essay on Trans- 
lated Verse. When ten years old, Johnson tells, heJiad "some 
preternatural intelligence of his father's death " in Ireland, he 
being at Caen in Normandy. Works ix. 212. 

48:6, enlarged. Here in the Biblical sense, "set free," as in 
Psalms iv. I. — 20, stripping the lace. From Thrale, p. 84 
(Croker ii. 77). — 25, Hudibras, Ralpho. See Hudihras, by 
Samuel Butler (1612-80). The former is a burlesque knight- 
errant, the latter his squire. Both are caricatures of religious 
fanaticism. 

49 • 3. Campbell. Dr. John Campbell, political and biographi- 
cal writer (1708-75). See the Life, July i, 3763 (i. 418). — 10, 
Roundhead. " The original of which name is not certainly 
known. Some say it was because the Puritans then commonly 
wore short hair, and the King's party long hair ; some say it was 
because the Queen at Strafford's trial asked who that round- 
headed man was, meaning Mr. Pym, because he spoke so 
strongly." Baxter, Narrative of his Life and Times (quoted by 
Trench, On the Study of Words, Lecture \ .).— Solomon's singers. 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 1)3 

Their names have not been transmitted. See 2 Chronicles v. 
12. — 22, celebrating the redemption. On Good Friday. Boswell 
tells of tea without milk. Life, April 17, 1778 (iii. 300), and 
April 18, 1783 (203). — 25, patriotistn. " Patriotism is the last 
refuge of a scoundrel," Johnson once said ; Life, April 7, 1775 
(ii. 348), It must be remembered that there had been a political 
faction calling themselves the "-Patriots." 

50 : 6, Squire Western. A coarse, blustering country squire in 
Fielding's Tom Jones. — 8, Pococurante. Italian, " little caring." 
Apparently not a proper name here, though there is a character so 
named in Voltaire's Candide. — 12, well-known lines. See the Life, 
February, 1766 (ii. 5-6), for Johnson's share in the Traveller. 
It was published in 1765. The lines cited by Macaulay are 
429-30. — 19, Rasselas. See ch. xxviii, T] 2. — 21, the Long 
Parliament. The fifth parliament of Charles I. It sat from 
November 3, 1640, to .4pril 20, 1653. — 25, Sir Adam Ferguson. 
See the Life, March 31, 1772 (ii. 170), and Leslie Stephen's y^j/^w- 
soti, pp. 183-4. 

51 : 8. Lord Bacon tells. In his Apophthegms, Old and New, 
§ 221. The story is of Thales, told by Diogenes Laertius, Life of 
Thales, § 9. 

52 : 29, on the other side. When Macaulay wrote, the principal 
courts of justice were held in Westminster Hall, which adjoins 
the chamber in which the House of Commons sits. 

53:20, Denham. Sir John Denham (1615-68), architect and 
poet, author of Cooper s Llill. — 25, greater man than Virgil. See 
the Life, under September 22, 1777 (iii. 193). In his note on the 
passage, Boswell tells of a debate on this subject between Johnson 
and Burke, in which Johnson argued for the superiority of Homer. 
He compares the two in his Life of Dryden {I Forks ix. 425). — 
27, preferred Popes Lliad. There is nothing in Johnson's conver- 
sations or in his Life of Pope to justify this assertion. Johnson 
says that Pope " made him [Homer] graceful, but lost him some 
of his sublimity." Works xi. 187. — 29, Tasso. The Geru- 
salemme Liberata (1574) was translated by Edward Fairfax (d. 
1635) in 1600 ; by John Hoole in 1763. Johnson wrote for Hoole 
the dedication to the Queen. See the Life, 1763 (i. 383). — 30, 
old EnglisJi ballads. See, for instance, his Life of Addison : " In 



174 NO'I'ES TO A/ACAULAV'S ESSAY. 

Chevy Chase there is not much of either bombast or affectation, 
but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possi- 
bly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the 
mind." — 32, Percy's. Thomas Percy (1728-1811), Bishop of 
Dromore, published his Reliques of English Poetry in 1765. He 
also wrote poems in imitation of the ballad style ; it is these of 
which Johnson "spoke with provoking contempt," Life, April 
3, 1773 (ii. 212). 

54:4, Tom Jones. Life, April 6, 1772 (ii. 174). — Gullivers 
Travels. Life, March 24, 1775 (ii. 319). Johnson said, " When 
once you have*thought of big men and little men, it is easy enough 
to do the rest." — Tristram Shandy. Appeared 1760-65. In 1776 
Johnson spoke of it in the past tense: " Nothing odd will do 
long. Tristra7n Shandy did not last," Life, under March ig 
(ii. 449). — 6, cold commendation. " The last piece that he lived 
to publish was the ' Castle of Indolence,' which was many years 
under his hand, but was at last finished with great accuracy. The 
first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills the imagination." 
Johnson, Life of Thomson ( Works xi. 232). — 9, Blackviore. 
(1650 7-1729). A voluminous writer of blank verse. To his 
Creation Johnson ascribes a "general predominance of philo- 
sophical judgment and poetical spirit." Woi'ks x. 213. — dialect. 
A contemptuous use of the word, in the sense of a man's customary 
set of terms, as revealing his prejudices or points of view. — barren 
rascal. It was Fielding whom Johnson so designated ; Gray he 
called a "dull fellow." Zz/i?, April 6, 1772, and under March 
27, 1775 (ii. 174 and 327). Yet Johnson read Amelia through 
without stepping. Life, April 12, 1776 (iii. 43). — 10, blockhead. 
Life, July i, 1763 (i. 419). Fielding, too, received this compli- 
ment. Life, April 6, 1772 (ii. 173). — 23, Pope's Epitaphs. The 
Dissertation on this subject was appended to the Life of Pope, 
Works xi. 200-218. It was written in 1756 for the Universal 
Visitor. — 26, Rymer. Thomas Rymer (1646-1713), histori- 
ographer to William and Mary. His Short View of Tragedy, 
1693, contains his celebrated criticism of Othello. — 30, touched 
every post. See Hill's note to the Life (i. 485, w. i). 

55 : 2, Smollett. See the Totir, October 28 (v. 366).— 4, Gold- 
smith. See the Life, June 22, 1776 (iii. 81-5). His epitaph was 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. I75 

written by Johnson. Some friends of Goldsmith sent Johnson a 
Round Robin, asking him to substitute English for Latin, but he 
refused. Burke, Reynolds, and Gibbon were among the signa- 
tories. — 18, tmfortunate chiefs. Chain-mail came into general use 
in the fifteenth century. Knights in full armor who had been 
unhorsed were helpless, — 28, Directions to Servants. A set of 
ironical rules for slovenliness and dishonesty, not published until 
after Swift's death. It is curious to speak of this work as a " book 
on the practical art of living." 

56:8, rural life. See Hill (iii. 450). Johnson knew a great 
deal about rural life. His first twenty-seven years were spent in 
small country towns. He also made frequent excursions from 
London. — 11, Country gentlemen. See the Tour, August 25 (v. 108). 
— 18, The Athenians. See the Life, April 3, 1773, and March 31, 
1772 (ii. 211 and 171). 

57 : I, books alone. One of IVIacaulay's rare ambiguities ; he 
means, " only by means of books," but might be understood to in- 
tend, " without other means than books." — 5, Bolt Coiirt. Where 
Johnson lived from 1776 to his death. — 12, shield of Achilles. See 
the Iliad ^vm. 478-608. — Death of Argus. See the Odyssey^y\\. 
290-327. Argus is the hound of Ulysses ; he dies of joy at recog- 
nizing his master on the latter's return to Ithaca. — 25, black 
Frank. Francis Barber, Johnson's negro servant. Johnson sent 
him to school, as related in the Life, April 26, 1768, and March 
21, 1772 (ii. 62, 146). — 32, at Paris. See note to 4 : 15. John- 
son spoke Latin ; Life, under November 12, 1775 (ii. 404). 

58:6, M. Simond. Louis Simond (i 767-1 83 1) ; author of 
Voyage d'nn Fran^ais en Angleterre, pendant les ann/es 18 10 et 
181 1 (published in 1816). — 12, the sage. Also, " my illustrious 
friend." — 16, the bills of mortality. The urban district compris- 
ing the city of London and its neighborhood, organized for certain 
objects, among them the making of weekly returns of births and 
deaths. — 19, Zeluco. A novel (1786) by Dr. John Moore (1729- 
1802). The sentences quoted are from ch. Ixxiii. — 21, that there 
law. The Salic lavi'. A law of the Salian Franks in the fifth 
century, concerning the inheritance of estates ; first applied to the 
succession in 13 16. By it women were excluded from the throne 
of France. 



176 NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 

59 : 2, his Journey. A Journey to the Western Islands of 
^("^//rf«(/ (published in 1775). "Having passed my time almost 
wholly in cities, I may have been surprised by modes of life and 
appearances of nature that are familiar to men of wider survey and 
more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be 
reciprocal, and I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on 
national manners, are the thoughts of one who has seen but little," 
Works viii. 412. — 11, Jierce and boisterous conte7npt. See Hill 
(iii. 449-459). Up to the age of fifty-three Johnson had not the 
means to travel. After receiving his pension he traveled much in 
England, went through Scotland and Wales and visited Paris. 
What Johnson ridiculed was the "tour of Europe," then part of 
the fashionable education of youth. — 14, Charletnont. James 
Caulfeild (1728-99), Earl of Charlemont ; a member of the Club. 
See the Life, under May 12, 1778 (iii. 352). — 17, Lord Plunkett. 
William Conyngham, Baron Plunket (1764-1S54), Lord Chancellor 
of Ireland(l830-35, 1835-41). — iO,Lord Hailes. Sir David Dalrym- 
ple (1726-92). Johnson praises \a% Annals of Scotland; Life, 
under April 29, 1776 (iii. 58). — 22, Robertson. In the Zz/^, 1768 
(ii- 53). Johnson evaded discussing him by saying, "Sir, I love Rob- 
ertson, and I won't talk of his book." In ihelJfe, April 30, 1773 
(ii. 236-8), he condemns him for his " romance," his " cumbrous 
detail," and his "verbiage." He also says, "I have not read 
Hume." — 24, Catiline's conspiracy. _" I asked him once concern- 
ing the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was my- 
self unacquainted — ' He talked to me at club one day (replies our 
Doctor) concerning Catiline's conspiracy — so X withdrew my atten- 
tion and thought about Tom Thumb,'" Thrale, p. 36. — 25, 
Pmiic war. Thrale, \i. 36. 

60 : 14, accidents 7oith essential properties. An accident is, in 
logic, a non-essential ; "a character which may be present in or 
absent in a member of a natural class," Cent. Diet. 

61 : 4, Johnsonese. A word coined in this place by Macaulay. — 
10, recorded in the Journey. Johnson's Works viii. 261. The 
incident happened at Glenelg, in the Highlands. For the other 
account, see Hill's Letters of Samuel Johnson, i. 251. — 14, The 
Rehearsal. A burlesque play (1672), in ridicule of Dryden and 
other contem.porary dramatists. The principal author was George 



NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 177 

Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1627-88). See the Life, under 
June ig, 1784 (iv. 320), whence Macaulay drew the anecdote and 
its application. — 18, Mannerism, etc. This paragraph is dissected 
and criticised in Minto's English Prose, p. roo. 

62:5, ^^^^ king's English. The expression was first used by 
Thomas Wilson in his Art of Rhetoric, 1553 (Minto). — 13, great 
old writers. Such authors as Burton, Jeremy Taylor, and Sir 
Thomas Browne are probably intended. — 18, fable about little 
fishes. From the Life, April 27, 1773 (ii. 231). — 25, Sir Piercy 
Shafton. An affected young courtier of Elizabethan times, in 
Scott's Monastery. His language, intended by Scott to be euphu- 
istic, resembles most closely that used in Sidney's Arcadia. The 
allusion is to the incident in the Monastery, ch. xxviii. , where Shaf- 
ton, escaping from custody in the disguise of a milkmaid, betrays 
his identity by his answer to a challenge. — Euphiiistic. Strictly 
speaking, in the style of the Enphues (1579-80) of John Lyly, or 
Lillie (1554-1606). 1-oosely applied, as here, to the " Italianate" 
language affected by other Elizabethan writers. — 26, Euphelia, etc. 
Imlac is the poet in Rasselas. Seged {^Rambler, Nos. 204-5) is a 
monarch who learns the futility of planning to be happy. Euphe- 
lia, Rhodoclia, Cornelia, and Tranquilla appear in other numbers 
of the Rambler (42 and 46 ; 62 ; 51 ; 119). 

63:13, Falstaff. See the Merry Wives of Windsor iv. 2. 
Sir Hugh Evans's title by courtesy and his broken English are 
accounted for by his being a parson and a Welshman. — 27, canvass 
of Reynolds. In separate portraits ; not in any group. 



NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

[The text is that of the original article in Fraser's Magazine 
for May, 1832 (vol. v., no. xxviii.). The original capitals and 
punctuation have been retained. 

In connection with this essay the introductory article on Bio- 
graphy {Fraser's, April, 1832, reprinted in the Miscellanies) should 
be read. Compare also Carlyle's remarks on Johnson and Bos- 
well in Heroes and Hero- Worship, ch. v.] 

65 : I, yEsop' s Fly. " It was prettily devised of ^sop : ' The 
fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel, and said, " What a 
dust do I raise ! " ' " — Bacon, Essay LIV., Of Vain-Glory. — 18, in 
very truth. Very = veritable, real. 

66:2, National Omnibus. A cheap magazine, then in exist- 
ence. — 4, throats of brass and of leather. The hostile reviews 
are compared to trumpets sounding notes of defiance ; the friendly 
notices are compared to puffs of the bellows. — 5,Io Paeans. 'Iw 
Jlaiciv, " Hail. Apollo ! " — 9, what degree of tumult. Ironical. 
The IliaJ cannot be said to have been " ushered in " at all ; 
Paradise Lost attracted little immediate attention. Carlyle's (im- 
plied) argument is. Great works appear without clamor ; Croker's 
Boswell appeared with clamor ; hence . . . — 21. Johnson once 
said. With reference to The Spectator. See the Life, April 3, 
1773 (i'- 212) ; quoted in Croker's Preface (I. vi., ;/. i). Croker's 
edition came out forty years after the original. — 26, voluntary 
resolution. Ironical, implying that no one had asked Croker to 
edit Boswell. — 27, archives. Here used in its primary sense : 
place where records are kept. 

67 : 19, reconciling the distant with the present . Emending or 
annotating the text where it appears to contradict itself. John- 
son's utterances at different times are sometimes inconsistent. — 



NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 1)9 

23, even Greek. Ironical, as if this were a still greater feat of 
scholarship. — 28, good manners. See 21 : 12. 

68 : 28, express Dissertation. Most writers would have insertea 
"or "after this word. — 31, what 7vas dark. See Paradise Lost 
i. 22. — 32, had thereby been enlightened. The use of had^= 
"would have" and of ze/^r^=" would be" is frequent with 
Carlyle. 

69 : 8, punctually. Minutely ; to a point. Ordinarily only of 
time. — 16, Carteret. See note to 17 : 18. — 20, Ma foi, monsieur. 
" Faith, sir, our happiness depends upon the way that our blood 
circulates." See the Zz/f, 1759 0- 343 I Croker i. 333). Croker 
errs in ridiculing Boswell's French, though in literary style dont 
would be substituted for i/ue. 

'JO •.22, Pudding . . . Praise. See the Z)// ;;«(?(/, i. 54. — 27, 
Is it not. Croker i. 66, ;/. i. 

72 : 2, Four Books. See note to 22 : 6. — 6, sextum quid. " A 
sixth something." — g, virtue. Power. — 20, cup and the lip. 
Proverbially, "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." 
Consult a classical dictionary under Anccsus. — 25, Entire. Por- 
ter. See the Cent. Diet. s. v. " entire." 

73 • 3' ''''''' Moralists. Something like this doctrine is to be found 
in Leibnitz. — 6, How much more, etc. Not clear. Carlyle means 
to say that Croker's failure is owing not so much to his not having 
done enough, as to his utter unfitness to perform his task properly, 
despite his industry. 

74:10, solid pudding. Cf. note to 70:22. — 32, Shakspeare 
Jubilee. Cf. note to 27 : 8. 

75 • 4. The very look. Referring to a sketch or caricature of 
Boswell by Sir Thomas Lawrence, the frontispiece to Croker's 
fourth volume. — 15, flunky. The Cent. Diet, explains this word 
as Scotch, and "recent in literature," giving besides the present 
passage a citation from Burns. — 22, Touchzvood. A character in 
the farce of What Next? (1816) by John Thomas Dibdin (1771- 
1841). — 23, Auehinleek. Alexander Boswell, father of the bio- 
grapher. " Pronounced Affleck," Life, under January 10, 1776 
(ii. 413). This story and others were communicated to Croker by 
Sir Walter Scott. See Jennings, Croker's Correspondence and 
Diaries, ii. 28-34. — '24, land-louper. Runabout ; cf. Ger. luufen. 



l8o NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

76 : 18, Gamaliel. See Acts v. 34. — 19, pedigrees. Boswell 
claimed descent from the Bruce, and kinship with George III. 
Tour, August 15 (v. 25, n. 2), and November 4 (v. 379). — 27, 

first sheriff appointed. Of Wigtonshire, 1743. Boswelliana,^. 5. 

77 • ^> gignianity. A coinage by Carlyle. The present passage 
is the earliest in which it was actually printed. The trial of the mur- 
derer John Thurtell took place in 1823 ; see DeQuincey's Works, 
ed. Masson, xiii. 43, n. 2. Carlyle never tired of this allusion ; 
he rings endless changes on "gigs," " gigmen," " gigmania," 
" gigmanity with its thousand gigs," " gigmanity disgigged," 
" anti-gigmanic," " gigmanism," etc. 

78 : 13, poor rtisty-coated ''''scholar," See Hill's Dr. Johnson : 
his Eriends and his Critics (Mr. Carlyle on Boswell). In 1 763 
Johnson was already the leader of the literary world, had an 
income larger than Boswell's allowance, and numbered among his 
friends men of the highest rank. — 16, the glass of fashion. See 
Hamlet iii. i, 161 — 28, innumerable observers. See Hamlet iii. 
I, 162. 

79 : 4, Feast of Tabernacles. See Leviticus xxiii. 33-44. — 8, 
blind old woman. Mrs. Williams, so called by brevet. See the 
Life, October 26, 1769 (ii. 99 and ti. 2), where Boswell retracts 
this unpleasant charge. — 29, Henry Erskine. This story in 
Scott's annotations to the Tour, Croker ii. 274, n. The " Outer- 
House " is the great hall in the " Parliament-House " at Edinburgh, 
the building in which the high courts of justice of Scotland sit. 

80 : 10, welters. A frequent word with Carlyle, of vague sig- 
nificance. The metaphor here is not clear. — 23, Hero-worship. 
This word represents one of Carlyle's principal dogmas. See 
Heroes and Hero- Worship. — 27, martyr. In its etymological 
sense of soilness ( /xdpTvc;). 

81 : 3, which the Supreme Quack should inherit. In which the 
greatest impostor should have the most prosperity. — 5, yellow 
leaf. See Alacbeth v. 3, 23. — 6, Prophet. In the sense of 
" spokesman," not that of " foreteller of the future." Boswell is 
meant. — 11, treacle. In allusion to the proverbial custom of sweet- 
ening with syrup the edge of the cup from which a bitter potion 
must be drunk. See, for instance, Lucretius, iv. il. — 18, an in- 
corruptible. See I Corinthians xv. 53. 



NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. i»i 

82 : 2, Johnsoniad. Coined by Carlyle in imitation of Iliad. 
The comparison of tlie Life to the Odyssey originated with Bos- 
well ; see his Advertisevient to the Second Edition (i. 12). — 21, 
Thus does, etc. This paragraph is unnecessarily complicated by 
the side-remark, " in which . . . there well might ". (83:1-3.) 
This digression omitted, the argument is as follows : " Boswell's 
character was a mixture of good and evil : so is that of every man, 
and can be symbolized by a union of god and beast. Thus the 
Greeks represented Pan, their god of Nature, as half god, half 
goat. Now man may be regarded as the epitome of the universe, 
unless, indeed, as Idealism holds, the universe itself is only the 
creation of mind. In either case, what is in substance true of the 
world is equally true of the human mind. The peculiarity in 
"Boswell's case was a lack of amalgamation : his good and evil 
qualities existed side by side, in apparent incompatibility," — 28, 
All, or Pan. Greek Trtiv, "all": ndv, "Pan." Cf. Faust ii. 
1261 : 

Das All der Welt 
Wird vorgestellt 
Im grosser! Pan. 

83 : 2, panic Awe. i^djia naviKov, the term applied by the 
Greeks to the unaccountable fear which sometimes seizes an army 
in battle. Pan's voice was believed to be able to cause such fear. 
— 6, fearful and wonderful. See Psalms cxxxix. 14. — waste 
fantasy. " ' This mad Universe,' says Novalis, ' is the waste pic- 
ture of your own Dream.' " Latter-Day Paiiiplilets, vii. — 21, cat- 
tle on a thousand hills. Psalms 1. 10. 

%^'.i. Prolegomena . . . Scholia. Keeping up the comparison, 
of the Life to an epic. — 22, itnport of Reality. See Carlyle's essay. 
Biography. The "speculation 'on the import of Reality'" is 
an extract from a fictitious work : " Professor Gottfried Sauer- 
teig's yEsthetische Spring^vurzel" {" ^'Esthetic Picklocks," Carlyle 
explains). 

86 : II, local habitation. See Midsummer Alight' s Dream v. i. 
17. — 15, Critics insist, etc. More idiomatically, " Critics insist 
much that the poet should," etc., or " demand of the poet that,' 
etc. — 17, transcendental. Intended in the Kantian sense, " apart 



152 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

from space and time," but the passage cannot be definitely para- 
phrased. 

87 '• 3, thesis. Here accurately, in the sense of proposition; 
often used loosely for dissertation. — 18, bootjacks. The word 
must here mean, "servants who pull off boots." The word in 
this sense is not in the dictionaries, but is so used by Thackeray, 
Esmond, ch. i. — 29, Prosperds air-vision. See The Tempest iv. 
i. 131. 

88 : I, slower. Adjective for adverb. — 7, Edict of Destiny. In 
imitation of the phrase, " revocation of the edict of Nantes." — 
25, Smolletts. Besides his novels he wrote a History of Eng- 
land. — Belshams. William Belsham (1752-1827), the author of 
some political essays, and of a History of Great Britain to the 
Conclusion of the Peace of Amiens in 1802. 

88 : 28, IValpole, etc. The ministries here mentioned held 
office between 1721 and 1784. The list is not complete or chrono- 
logical. 

89 : 3, enclostire-hills. For acquiring possession of waste or 
common lands (1801 and 1845). — 8, sat in Chancery. The Lord 
Chancellor is the head of the English judicial system. As speaker 
of the House of Lords, he sits upon the Woolsack. — 13, specific — 
levity. Parody of " specific gravity." — 32, had their being. Acts 
xvii. 28. 

90 : 4, Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler. Nassau William Senior 
and Michael Thomas Sadler, two contemporary writers on 
political economy. Senior's Three Lectures on Wages and Sad- 
ler's Latu of Population both appeared in 1830. The latter was 
" smashed " by Macaulay. 

91 : 2, Apneas Sylvius. Eneo Sylvio Piccolomini (1405-64), 
Pope Pius H. — 5, the Reformatioti. See Heroes and Hero-]Vor- 
ship for Carlyle's treatment of John Knox. — 21, Mary Stuart. 
Carlyle commends the biography of Johnson as better than any 
history of England ; he then condemns Robertson's history of 
Scotland for being only a biography of Mary Stuart and Darnley. 
A biography of John Knox would probably have satisfied him. 

92: 3, with burning candle. Illuminated, from the inside, like 
a transparency. A similar expression in Latter-Day Pamphlets^ 
p. 300. — 31, dialects, Cf. note to 54 ^g. 



NOTES TO CAKLYLE'S ESSAY. 1S3 

93 : II, Father of Lies. See John viii. 44. — 16, taking notes. 
Allusion to Burns' lines, On Captain Grose's Peregrinations 
through Scotland : 

" If there's a hole in a' your coats, 
I rede ye, tent it ; 
A chiel's amang ye takin' notes. 
And faith, he'll prent it." 

— 21, needs not care. Need is more usual. — 31, or inserted. 
Sarcastically, implying that the heedless talker is likely to become 
a felon. 

94:1, Halfness. A translation by Carlyle of the German 
Halbheit. — 8, Watch thy tongue. See Proverbs iv. 23. — 32, ass- 
skin. Boswell of course wrote on paper ; parchment is made of 
sheepskin. Carlyle employs the word ass-skin for its ludicrous 
effect. 

95:6, iron leaf. In Past and Present (III. x. 3) Carlyle 
writes : " Things, as my Moslem friends say, ' are written on the 
iron leaf.' " The Koran mentions recording angels, but tells 
nothing of their writing on iron. — 13, vnich-enduring man. The 
translation of the common epithet of Ulysses, ■Ko'km'kaq. 

96:8, Natus sum, etc. " I was born ; I hungered, I sought ; 
I rest now, having taken my fdl." 

98 : 3, fact which we owe. We owe to Jean Paul not the fact, 
but its observation and record. — Jean Paul. Johann Friedrich 
Richter. See Carlyle's essay on him. 

100:1, Vanity-fair. See the Pilgrim's Progress, Part I. — 9, 
Popinjays. See Scott's Old Mortality, ch. ii. 

101 : 14, believe and tremble. ?>ee James ii. ig. 

102 : 18, human face divine. " A confession, said to have been 
made by him, that he never saw the ' human face divine,' " Haw- 
kins, p. 33. See Paradise Lost iii. 44. — 32, Ariel, Caliban. 
See The Tempest. 

103:4, the fewest men. After the German, wenigsten. — 26, 
A chacttn, etc. " To each according to his capacity ; to each 
capacity according to its works." One of the ma.xims of the social- 
istic writer, Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (i 760-1 825). 
At this time (1829-32) there was actually a Saint-Simonian com- 
munity, founded by some of his followers, 



184 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

104 : 16, His favorites, etc. From the Life, 1712 (i. 47). — 25, 
blubber. The same as " blubberer." — 31, The child is father of the 
man. From Wordsworth's lines, beginning, " My heart leaps up." 

105 : 8, Corporal Trim. Uncle Toby's orderly in Tristram 
Shandy. See vol. iii. eh. 42-43, for the "auxiliary verbs"; they 
are not Trim's but Walter Shandy's. They practically mean every 
possible question that can be asked on a given subject. — 30, in- 
quires Sir John. The extract is from his Life, p. 11. The story 
is also told by Boswell in the Life, 173 1 (i. 76). Carlyle selects 
Hawkins's account in order to ridicule it. 

106 : 10, Dr. LLall remarks. In a note communicated to Croker 
(i. 46, n. I of his edition of the Life). Dr. Hall was the Master 
of Pembroke College, Oxford, at this time. As to Carlyle's com- 
ments, Hill disposes of them (Friends and Critics, pp. 24-25) by 
pointing out that the students dined in common. "Whatever 
was Johnson's want of proper clothing and of ready cash, he lived, 
so far as food went, as the accounts show, in the same way as his 
fellow-students." Johnson was a commoner (Hawkins, p. 59). — 
ig, he further discourses. Hawkins's Life, p. 18. In the orig- 
inal, " civil policy," not polity. 

107:5, perfect through suffering. See Ilebreivs ii. 10.— 8, 
Translation. Into Latin, of Pope's Messiah, which is itself an 
imitation of Vergil's fourth eclogue, the Pollio. See the Life, 
1728(1. 61). — 17, Market Bosworth. See the Life, 1732 (i. 85-86), 
whence Carlyle borrows the expressions quoted, except, "re- 
linquishes, etc.," which is from Hawkins, p. 21. — 21, Samson. 
See fudges xvi. 21. 

108 : I, this Letter. From the Life, 1734 (i. 91-92). — 2, Sylva- 
nus Urban. So Cave (whose first name was Edward) called him- 
self in his capacity as editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. — 24, Go 
thou, etc. Luke x. 37. — 26, five pounds. For his translation 
from the French of Lobos 'Voyage to Abyssinia. 

109: 17, At Edial, etc. The advertisement inserted by Johnson 
in the Gentleman s Magazine, 1736 {Life i. 97). — 23, Dr. Parr. 
Samuel Parr (1747-1825), a master at Harrow, mentioned here as 
a typical bookworm. — 28, Cromzvell do? etc. One of Scott's 
stories ; cf. note to 75 '• 23- — gart kings ken that there zuas a lith 
" Made kings know that there was a joint." 



NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 185 

no : 8, Pactolus. A small stream of Lydia, flowing from Mt. 
Tmolus and emptying into the Ilermus. In ancient times its bed 
was said to contain gold-dust. — 13, not of Ephcsus \ i. e., in some 
modern city. See Acts xix. 35. — ic,, first PVriters. That is, in 
England. — 27, Otway. Thomas Otway (1651-85), author of the 
tragedies Venice Preserved and The Orphan. It is said that he 
was choked by some bread which he devoured in a rage of hun- 
ger. — 29, Scrogginses, Scroggen is the poet in Goldsmith's short 
poem, A Description of an Author s Bedchamber, which Carlyle 
here quotes. 

in: 3, \/1/r. Boyce. Samuel Boyse ; see note to 43: 18. — 
II, carpe diem. "Seize the day"; make hay while the sun 
shines. Horace, Odes I. xi. 8. — 28, Cave's temper, etc. Haw- 
kins, pp. 45-48, 49-50- 

113 : 24, lord of the Hon heart. Smollett, Ode to Independence. 

114:26, MiKcenasship. "Patronage"; from Maecenas, the 
patron of Horace. 

115 : I, some third method. Carlyle's prophecy has not yet been 
fulfilled. — 14, toga virilis. The " garb of manhood," assumed by 
Roman boys at sixteen, when they came of age. 

116:25, the wages of sin. See Romans vi. 23. Patronage 
involved lying, and lying is moral death, according to Carlyle. 

117:1, Seven years, etc. See note to 43:24. This is the 
latter part of Johnson's letter to Chesterfield, February 7, 1755, 
provoked by learning that the earl was the author of an anony- 
mous complimentary notice of the Dictionary in a miscellany 
called The World. — e^^ one act of assistance. Croker was puzzled 
by Boswell's admission that Johnson had at one time received ten 
guineas from Chesterfield, but there is no inconsistency ; Johnson 
had received no assistance during the seven years since he had 
been repulsed. The money must have been given in 1747, when 
the Plan of the dictionary was published. — 7, The shepherd in 
Virgil. See the .£'c/(?§-M^j-viii. 43-45. — \^, solitary. Alluding to 
the death of his wife, which had occurred in 1752. 

118 : 12, vizards. Alluding to the ancient Athenian custom of 
actors on the stage wearing masks. — 14, viroKpiT?/g. "Actor," 
but inserted by Carlyle with suggestion of its later, post-classical 
pjeftning, " hypocrite."-^i?3, idol-cavern, In Bftcpn'g i§nsp of $he 



1 86 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

word " idol," as " false notion." " Idols are the deepest fallacies 
of the human mind. . . Idols are imposed upon the understand- 
ing, either, i. by the general nature of mankind ; 2. the nature of 
each particular man ; or 3. by words, or communicative nature . . . 
idols of the tribe {trihi'is) ... of the den {specils), of the market 
{fori). There is also a fourth kind, which we call idols of the 
theatre {iheatri), being superinduced by false theories or philoso- 
phies . . . 

" The idols of the den hare their origin . . . from education, 
custom, and the accidents of particular persons," Advancement 
of Learning, v. 4, p. 207 (Bohn). — 23, What is Truth ? See 
Bacon, Essays, I., Of Truth, andjohti xviii. 38. 

119 : 20, simulacra. " Images." 

120'. 12,, Bolingbrokcs. Henry St. John, Viscount B. (1678- 
1751), author of various political, historical, and philosophical 
writings. — Tolands. John Toland (1679-1722), author of 
Christianity not Mysterious (1696). — 16, Bayle. Pierre Bayle 
(1647-1706), French philosopher and critic. — 27, Trulliber. In 
Yx^^vsx^s Joseph Andrews (bk. ii. ch. xiv.) : " Mr. Trulliber was 
a parson on Sundays, but all the other six days might more 
properly be called a farmer. . . The hogs fell chiefly to his 
care," etc. 

121 : 18, infant H'trcules. Said of Johnson by Boswell, Life, 
May g, 1773 (ii. 260). 

122 : 7, a Charles. Charles II. — ^, Jeffries. George Jeffreys, 
Baron Jeffreys of Wem (1648-89). As chief justice of the court 
of King's Bench, presided at the trials of Russell and Sidney. 
Lord Chancellor under James II. — g, Russel, Sidney. William 
Russell, Lord Russell (1639-83) ; Algernon Sidney (or Sydney) 
(1622-83); beheaded for alleged complicity in a plot for " com- 
passing the death of the king." 

124 : 16, a Burke ; or a Wilkes. A statesman or a demagogue. 
John Wilkes (1727-97) was several times expelled from the House 
of Commons by a ministry to whom he was obnoxious, and 
re-elected by the county of Middlesex. 

125 : 10, provision for the day. See note to 37 : 25. — 29, 
Phlegetlton, etc. Phlegethon (<i>Aeye0wv, " blazing ") was a river 
of fire in Hades. Fleet-ditch, once a river, is a London sewer. 



NOTES TO CARL VLB'S ESSAY. 187 

Carlyle occasionally uses " mud " as a contemptuous prefix ; e.g., 
mud-gods. "Mother of dead dogs" is a nickname of the 
Thames ; though that can hardly be intended here. 

126:11, asstcrance of a Man. See Hamlet iii. 4, 62. — 13, 
confusion worse confounded. Paradise Lost \\. 996. — 22, redeem- 
ing ike time. See Colossians iv. 5 ; Ephesians v. 15-16. — 28, the 
whole world. See Matthew xvi. 26. 

127:6, transcendental. All-transcending; supreme. — 12, au- 
thentic Symbol. The English Church. — 13, waxing old, etc. 
Hebrews i. 11 ; Psalms cii. 26 ; Isaiah 1. 9, li. 6. — 15, Pillar of 
Fire. See Exodus xiii. 21. — 16, witnesses. Martyrs ; see note to 
80 : 27. — 24, inferior lights. The sun and moon. — 32, St. 
Clement Danes. The church where Johnson worshiped. See the 
Life, April 9, 1773 (ii. 214). 

128 : 9, quit hitn like a man. See Samuel iv. 9. 

129 : 22, hewing of wood, etc. See Joshua ix. 21 ; Deut. xxix. 
II. — 23, sedentary. With special allusion; see 112:7. — 28, 
Parliamentary Debates. The ' ' Senate of Lilliput " Debates for 
the Gentletnan's Magazine. See the Life, 1738 (i. 11 5-1 18) and 
1741 (i. 150). See also Hill's Appendix A to vol. i. (i. 501-512). 

130 • 3' impransus. See note to 43 : 22. — 4, grain of mustard- 
seed. See Alattheiv xiii. 31 ; Mark iv. 31 ; Luke xiii. 19. — 10, 
Fourth Estate. The public press. — 15, behind the screen. See 
note to 43 : 3. — 19, his praise spoken. For the Life of Savage. 

131 : 2, his Wife must leave him. Not related by Boswell, but 
an inference from the story of Johnson's walking the streets all 
night with Savage, or from an otherwise incredible story in 
Hawkins (p. 89) of an estrangement between Johnson and his 
wife, so that " while he was in a lodging in Fleet Street, she was 
harbored by a friend near the Tower." — 13, Gentleman of the 
British Museufn. See Croker v. 380. — 15, Old Mortality. In 
Scott's novel of the same name, an itinerant antiquary, who 
cleaned the moss from grave-stones and restored the epitaphs. — 
31, Tempus edax rerum. " Time, the devourer of (all) things." 
Ovid, Metamorphoses xv. 234. — 32, ferax. " Productive." 

132:13, He said, etc. Quoted from the Life, 1737 (i. 105). 
The speaker is " an Irish painter," whom Jahnson knew at Bir- 
mingham and was interrogating as to the expense of London life, 



1 88 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

— 24, Giaours (?«(/ Harolds. The Giaour (\'?>\'^ &\\A Childe Harold 
(1812, 1816, 1818), both by Byron. — On another occasion. From 
Thrale, p. 23 (Croker i. i6g). — 25, his own Satire. The Vanity 
of Human Wishes, in which occurs the well-known couplet : 

Yet mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 
Toil, envy, want, the Patron, and the jail. 

For Patron had originally stood garret. — 32, Hercules. At one 
time went mad, according to legend. 

133 : 16, the Brick Desert. Evidently London. — 26, being. 
" Because he was." — 31, Constantine' s-banner . Constantine, A. D. 
312, marching at the head of his army, is said to have seen in the 
sky a cross, with the words, " /« hoc signo vinces " (" In this sign 
thou wilt conquer "), whereupon he embraced Christianity and 
adopted the cross and motto as his standard. 

134 : 12, kitted by a review. Alluding to the death of Keats 
(1821). 

136 : 2, inspired-idiot. See note to 29 : i. — 3, as Hawkins says . 
Hawkins, p. 416. — 8, the gooseberry-fool. So Goldsmith humor- 
ously termed himself in Retaliation : a Poem, written as a reply to 
Garrick's " Poor Poll " epitaph. This nonsense-epithet is really 
the name of a dish, and the fool is allied with the French fouler, 
"press, crush." — 14, Dr. Minor, Dr. Major. So Goldsmith and 
Johnson were respectively dubbed by the Rev. George Graham 
(d. 1767), assistant master at Eton and author of Telemachus, a 
Mask. Tour, August 24 (v. 97). — 19, worthy. Boswell often 
calls Langton " our worthy friend." — 21, could not stop. Life, 
May 9, 1773 (ii. 262). — 30, Thralia. So Johnson Latinized Mrs. 
Thrale's name in his verses written in Skye : 

Thraliae discant resonare nomen 
Littora Skiae. 

Tour, September 6 (v. 158). 

137 • 3> Highland Lairds. In Skye ; Tour, September 27 
(v. 261). — 5, Mr. F. Lewis. The Rev. Francis Lewis, who 
translated some mottoes from Latin for the Rambler. Johnson 
afterward described him as given in the text. Life, 1750 (i. 225). 
—7, res gestae. "Affairs transacted." — 9, Stat parvi, etc. " The 
gh^d^ %WA% Pf ft Utrte name." Lucan says of Pompey i^Ph^r* 



NOTES TO CAkLVLE'S ESSAY. 189 

saHa i. 135), " Stat magni nominis umbra," " of a mighty 
name." — 17, some ancient slaves. See Exodus xxi. 6 ; Deut. xv. 
16-17. — 25, Supreme Priest. Archbishop. Carlyle allows the 
archbishop an expenditure of ;^3i,200 a year and the bishop 
a salary of ;i^66oo a year. — 27, Church-Overseer . Bishop ; the 
word is derived from the Greek imam'Koq, " over-seer." — 28, 
secular Administrators. Lords lieutenant, and magistrates, of 
counties. — 29, Horse-subduers, and Game-destroyers . The landed 
gentry and aristocracy, whom Carlyle is fond of ridiculing for 
their devotion to sport and their indifference to the " condition- 
of-England question." " Horse-subduers " is in imitation of the 
Homeric epithet 'nrndSa/iog. — 30, Primates. The Archbishop of 
Canterbury is called " Primate of all England," and the Arch- 
bishop of York, " Primate of England." 

138 : 32, What I gave, etc. Carlyle's alteration of a sentiment 
sometimes found in old epitaphs, to the effect : " What I spent, 
I have ; what I saved, I have lost." 

139 : I, Early friends, etc. Of Johnson's friends, Savage died 
in 1743 ; Richardson in 1761 ; Goldsmith, 1774 ; Garrick, 1779 ; 
Beauclerk, 1780 ; Thrale, 1781. — 13, To estimate, etc. More 
idiomatically, "The quantity of work . . . can never be accu- 
rately estimated." 

141 : 27, Continental Subsidies. The subsidies granted to the 
sovereigns of the Continent by the younger Pitt during the struggle 
against the French Revolution and Napoleon, 

X^2 : 1, T)iderots. Denis Diderot (1713-84), chiefly famous 
for his work upon the EncyclopMie M^thodique (1751-72). — 11, 
Chalk-Farm. The popular dueling ground in the first part of the 
present century. The last fatal duel at Chalk Farm was in 1843. 
On Primrose Hill, north of Regent's Park in London. Hare, 
ii. 141. 

143: 15, Whiskerando. The name is taken from that of Don 
Ferolo Whiskerandos in Sheridan's Critic. — 23, Peterloos. " The 
Field of Peterloo " ; St. Peter's Field, near Manchester, where, in 
1 8 19, July 16, a reform meeting was dispersed by the yeomanry 
cavalry. 

144 : 3, bravest of the brave. The term applied to Marshal Ney 
by his soldiers. — 11, Giant Despair. See the Pilgrim's Prog- 



19<^ NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

ress, first part. — 12, Golgotha. See Mark xv. 22. — Sorcerer's- 
Sabbath. The witches' festival on the Brocken on May-day eve. — 
21, flaunting in the ring. Boswell is compared to a young knight, 
disporting himself in the pastimes of chivalry. — tarrying by the 
wine-cup. See Proverbs xxiii. 30 and the note to 28 : 2. — 30, 
Welshwoman. Mrs. Williams. 

145: I, Doubting-castle. Giant Despair's abode, where Chris- 
tian and Hopeful were imprisoned and beaten. — 4, ruith frigid 
indifference. From the last T[ (tenth page) of the Preface to the 
Dictionary. — 8, By popular delusion. " Illiterate writers will at 
one time or another, by publick infatuation, rise into renown, who, 
not knowing the original import of words, will use them with col- 
loquial licentiousness, confound distinction and forget propriety." 
Preface to Dictionary (last ^ of ninth page). 

146 : 6, accidental. See note to 60 : 14. — 13, Whitfield. George 
Whitfield (1714-70), a Methodist popular preacher, with the 
Wesleys from 1734 to 1741. Frequently mentioned in the Life. 
— 14, lives ^ 7noves, etc. See Acts y.v\\. 28. — ig. Clear your mind 
of Cant. Seethe Life, May 15, 1783 (iv. 221). 

147 : 16, worthy of his hire. See Luke x. 7. — 24, Apocalyptic 
Bladder. Grotesque parody of the " apocalyptic vials " ; see 
Revelation xv., xvi. The modern art of advertising or "puffing" 
often furnishes Carlyle with a subject for declamation. 

148 : 3, shaggy exterior. Goldsmith said of Johnson, " He has 
nothing of the bear but his skin." Life, under May 28, 1768 
(ii. 66). — II, Ark of the Covenant. See Exodus xxv. 10-22 ; 
xxxvii. 1-9. — laid hand on them. See i Chronicles xiii. g-io ; 2 
Samuel v\. 6-7. — 32, on Dead Asses. In A Sentimental Jour jiey^ 
vol. i. {Nampont). 

149 : 2, Daughter of Vice. See note to 44 : 8. — 4, good Samar- 
itan. See Ltike x. 25-37. — 6, viultiticde of Sins. See i Peter iv. 
8. — II, widow's mite. See Mark xii. 41-44. — 21, Salve magna 
parens. " Hail, great mother," Vergil, Georgics II. 173, in 
apostrophe to Italy. In the original edition of Johnson's Z>/(://^«- 
ary, vol. ii., appears among the definitions : 

" LiCH. n. s. [lice, Saxon.] A dead carcase ; whence , , . 
LJchfield, the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named 
from martyred Christians. Salve magna parens." 



NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 191 

Lice should be lie (Anglo-Saxon). 

150 : 3, Sunday, October 18, etc. Quoted by Boswell, Life, 
1767 (ii. 43), from Johnson's Prayers and Meditations. See note 
to 15 ! 22. — 23, ' Once, indeed,' said he. These sentences are 
from the Life, under August 12, 1784 (iv. 373). — 31, "Madam, 1 
beg yotir pardon," etc. This extract is an abridgment by Carlyle 
of a passage from Warner's Tour through the Northern Counties 
of England {i%02), which he found in Croker v. 288, n. 3. John- 
son is represented as thus excusing himself to "the lady of the 
house " that he visited on the occasion of his last trip to Lichfield, 
for an unannounced absence of an entire day.- The last sentence 
of the extract Carlyle took from Boswell's account, which is some- 
what different. For an American account of a visit to Lichfield 
and Uttoxeter, see Hawthorne's Our Old Home, fifth essay. 

151 ' 14, moonlight of meitiory. Carlyle uses the phrase in his 
Journal, February 8, 1835, and adds, "a pathetic phrase of 
Richter's." Froude, Carlyle in London, i.17. — 22, life's fitful 
fever. See Macbeth iii. 2, 2-3. 

152 :6, the right foot. Life, 1764 (i. 484). — 20, lady-visitors. 
The visitor in question was the Comtesse de Boufflers, who visited 
Engldnd in 1763. The story is told in the Life, under November 
5> 1775 (ii- 405)- — 30. -^ gentleman who, etc. From Recollections 
of Dr. Johnson, by Miss Reynolds (Croker v. 391, in his General 
Appendix). 

153 : 8, Renny dear. Miss Frances Reynolds (1727-1807), sister 
of Sir Joshua. Johnson speaks of her as Renny in his letters to 
Mrs. Thrale. — 15, Brummellean. From George Bryan Brummell 
(1778-1840), known as Beau Brummell, Famous dandy. He 
had left England in 1816. — 21, with his king. George III. 
See the Life, February, 1767 (ii. 33-42). 

154 : 15, grew with his growth, etc. See Pope's Essay on Man, 
135-136. 

155- 7. good yeom&n. See Henry V. iii. i. 25-26. — i'i,John 
Bull. So Boswell had called him ; Tour, introduction (v. 20). 
— 16, Clergyman. " Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishop- 
rick of Durham, that he had never read the New Testament with 
attention," Life, 1766 (ii. 9). — 18, Voltaire's lackey. Life, 
1763 (i. 434). — 19, acerrinii ingenii, etc. " Of keenest intellect, 



102 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 

and of little learning." Life, under November 5, 1775 (ii, 406). 
— 20, Rousseau. Johnson said he ought to be U-ansported ; Life, 
1766 (ii. 12). — 23, milking the Bull. An old proverbial metaphor 
for fruitless speculation. Johnson used it of " Hume and other 
sceptical innovators." Zz/d-, 1763(1. 444). — 2b,D'Alemberts. Jean 
le Rond D'Alembert (1713-84), associated with Diderot in the 
production of the EncyclopMie — 28, kitchen-latin. Not in the 
dictionaries ; a translation by Carlyle of the German Kiichen- 
latein, " dog-latin." — 29, Editiones Principes. First editions (of 
the classics). Life, October 31, 1775 (ii. 399). — Monsheer Nong- 
tongpaw ! Evidently meant to represent a British mispronuncia- 
tion of Monsieur N'entend-pas, " Mr. Doesn't-understand." The 
connection with what precedes is not clear. 

J-5^-^Sy "'^''^''b' ''f^^^'^ ^""'^y^'^''- Johnson, 1709 ; Hume, 171 1„ 
— 22, with the bayonet, etc. Quoted from Memoirs (1806-7), 
by Richard Cumberland; l:ia.^\&r'sJohnsoniana, p. 211. 

157 • 23, Bartholomew-Fair. The Smithfield cattle-fair, orig- 
inally held on the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day, the day itself, 
and the day after. Established under Henry I.; abolisted 1852. 

158 : 7, did not meet. In 1769 they once called on Boswell on 
the same day ; Boswelliana, p. 61. — 20, tie the shoe-latchets. See 
Mark i. 7. 



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